Tour's 60 day challenge

[RonO]

This is slightly old news (Aug 25) but MarkE seems to think that Tour's
origin of life gap denial is something worth discussing.
https://evolutionnews.org/2023/08/origin-of-life-james-tours-sensational-60-day-challenge-to-ten-top-researchers/

For some weird reason Tour is challenging some scientists to answer his
questions, and he claims that he will shut up if they put up. The issue
has always been that Tour never shut up when he had to put up and never
could. Origin of life denial is never going to do anything to support
Tour's religious beliefs. Tour needs to put up his evidence that his
god created life on this planet. Like MarkE, Tour likely doesn't want
to believe in the designer that is responsible for the current origin of
life gap that exists in this reality. Tour even understands that there
is no ID science that he can do to support his religious beliefs, so why
would denial do anything for him?

The origin of life obviously happened, and it happened a very long time
ago on an earth that was much different from the one that exists today.
What is crazy is that Tour understands that his denial can't apply to
what we know about how life evolved on this planet for over 3 billion
years after that origin. It doesn't even matter if life was seeded onto
this planet by any type of accident or design. Life evolved for
billions of years as microbial lifeforms. Multicellular plants and
animals have only existed on this planet for around the last billion years.

When it came time for the ID perps to put up or shut up they started
running the bait and switch. No creationists rubes have ever gotten the
promised ID science, and Tour claims that none ever existed for them to
have anyway. Tour is the one that claims that he doesn't know how to do
any ID science. God-of-the-gaps denial has been know to not mean what
the creationists want it to mean since the Supreme court told them that
what we haven't figured out yet, isn't any support for creationist
Biblical claims. What creationist needed was something real and
positive that they could look at. They tried to create their flood
geology program, but it failed. They could never figure out how a
global flood could have occurred and left the evidence of an earth
billions of years old. Luskin has put paid to that stupidity when he
claimed to have researched sedimentary rocks around 3 billion years old
for his PhD thesis research.

Gap denial is never going to amount to anything when creationists like
Tour do not want to believe in the gods that fill those gaps.

https://reasons.org/explore/publications/articles/summary-of-reasons-to-believes-testable-creation-model-1

The reason to believe IDiots account for a very early origin of life by
claiming that there is a lot that the Bible doesn't mention. Can a
Biblical creationists like Tour do that? The reason to believe IDiots
can't seem to reinterpret the Bible enough to rearrange the creation of
various lifeforms. Land plants still have to be created before sea
creatures and sea mammals have to be created before land vertebrates.
Can Tour do any better?

Really, Tour is the one that has to put up or shut up. Why should
science have to know what happened to create life over 3 billion years
ago on this planet? We already have figured out enough about the
existence of life on this planet to make the Biblical young earth,
geocentric, flat-earth, "models" untenable. Even the old earth "models"
have issues. The Bible claims that the sun and moon were created on the
4th day after land plants (including the agriculturally relevant
angiosperms). The reason to believe IDiots have to reinterpret the
Bible so that the sun and moon were just made visible. Can Tour make
that reinterpretation?

Creationists like Tour have always needed to deal with what we have
already figured out, not what we haven't figured out at this time.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark]

For those who may not know, "Ron Okimoto" is the name given to an early beta release of ChatGPT. It's nostalgic to see it still running here with these bot posts.

The technology has come a long way. I asked ChatGPT 3.5 to make an assessment of the post above:

"The argument presented appears to be critical of James Tour's challenge to scientists regarding the origin of life and suggests that his denial of certain scientific aspects doesn't align with the evidence supporting the concept of the origin of life. The author argues that Tour's challenge may not contribute to his religious beliefs and questions whether he can provide evidence for his claims. The argument also highlights the long history of scientific understanding of life on Earth and dismisses the idea of "God-of-the-gaps" denial as inadequate. Ultimately, the author contends that creationists like Tour should focus on reconciling their beliefs with established scientific knowledge."

With all the bad news around AI, it's refreshing to see this evidence of progress: much less verbosity and repetition, losing the gratuitous insults, and now even some circumspection with the use of "appears to be".

[RonO]

You only wish you had that excuse. Why not tell us how the current
origin of life gap, that you spent so much time defining, fits into the
relgious beliefs that you want to support with that god-of-the-gaps
denial? Tour won't do it. Do you recall the Shermer-Meyer discussion
where Meyer refused to relate his god-of-the-gaps denial to his
religious beliefs? Denial for denial purposes, will never amount to
anything worth lying to yourself about. The sad thing is that all the
IDiots did it to support their religious beliefs, but what happened when
they realized that the Top Six wasn't anything that they wanted to
understand enough to keep lying to themselves about the denial?

You met an end to the denial too. Refusing to deal with why you have to
wallow in the denial should make you want to rethink why you are doing
it. This is obviously not anything to do in order to support your
religious beliefs. Kalk couldn't do it any longer. Now he is stuck
denying the denial. He obviously still wants to support his religious
beliefs, but he doesn't seem to know what to do next.

Using the Top Six (the origin of life is #3) as they have traditionally
been dishonestly used by creationists, should not be an option when you
can't face what they tell you about this reality. Just using them to
temporarily lie to yourself about something should not be an option when
you know that you will end up denying the denial. Tour is in the same
boat with you, and it is something that you should deal with, without
remaining willfully ignorant of reality.

Denton and Behe told you decades ago that IDiots could not expect very
much to change with any IDiotic scientific successes because they both
understood that it was what was between the gaps that most Biblical
creationists could not deal with. The majority of IDiotic creationist
support had always come from the YEC creationist faction, and both Behe
and Denton were old earth theistic evolutionists. They knew that
demonstrating that some designer was responsible for the Top Six would
have never resulted in anything that the YEC could live with, and the ID
perps had inherited the Top Six from the YEC scientific creationists.
The ID perps got away with it for decades because they fed them to the
rubes as the Scientific creationists had fed them to the rubes. They
were only used as disembodied bits of denial that creationists were only
supposed to temporarily lie to themselves about before moving on to the
next bit of denial. Nothing positive was ever supposed to have been
built out of the Top Six. No science was ever going to be accomplished.

The last thing that Tour wants to do is to demonstrate that some god is
responsible for the origin of life on earth. He even claims that he
doesn't know of any way to do that. What he needs to admit is that he
never wanted to be able to demonstrate that some god fills gap #3 in
context with the other Top Six. Just like you, Tour likely doesn't want
to believe in that god.

Why didn't you demonstrate that you could deal with #3 of the Top Six in
terms of the gap that you took so much time to define? Using the origin
of life for gap denial is stupid and dishonest when you do not want to
believe in the god that would fill that gap.

>
> The technology has come a long way. I asked ChatGPT 3.5 to make an assessment of the post above:
>
> "The argument presented appears to be critical of James Tour's challenge to scientists regarding the origin of life and suggests that his denial of certain scientific aspects doesn't align with the evidence supporting the concept of the origin of life. The author argues that Tour's challenge may not contribute to his religious beliefs and questions whether he can provide evidence for his claims. The argument also highlights the long history of scientific understanding of life on Earth and dismisses the idea of "God-of-the-gaps" denial as inadequate. Ultimately, the author contends that creationists like Tour should focus on reconciling their beliefs with established scientific knowledge."
>
> With all the bad news around AI, it's refreshing to see this evidence of progress: much less verbosity and repetition, losing the gratuitous insults, and now even some circumspection with the use of "appears to be".
>

Isn't it sad that you can't deal with reality. You do not need an AI to
tell you that what Tour and you are doing is stupid and dishonest. Just
the fact that you do not want to believe in the god that fills gap #3 in
the order in which the gaps must have occurred in this universe should
tell you that wacko denial and willful ignorance will not change reality.

The Top Six killed IDiocy on TO because god-of-the-gaps denial is as
stupid and dishonest as it has always been, and in the end the competent
and informed had to run from what they had supported for decades. There
isn't any science that IDiotic type creationists want to accomplish
because science is just the best means we have for understanding nature,
and nature isn't Biblical enough for most IDiots.

What Tour and you need to do is try to figure out what nature (the
creation) actually is and try to fit it into your Biblical beliefs like
the Reason to Believe IDiots have failed to do. You should want to do
it to see if you can do better than the failures. You need to at least
make the attempt to see if you can reinterpret the Bible so that gap #3
denial might be reconcilable with your religious beliefs.

Running from reality like you are doing above will never change reality.

There are Biblical creationists that have given up on trying to fit what
we know about nature into any Biblical context. You likely know that,
that is the next logical step since the failure of gap denial.

Denton is probably a deist and has claimed that his designer got the
ball rolling with the Big Bang and it all unfolded into what we have
today. Behe claims that his designer is active and has tweeked the
universe every once in a while to create what we have today. Neither of
their options fits into the usual literal interpretation of the Bible,
but they obviously do not care because they understand things, such as
biological evolution is a fact of nature.

The Biblical creationists at BioLogos are also old earth theistic
evolutionists. It is just what you get when you put a designer in the
Top Six gaps.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark]

Just to be clear, I pasted your post verbatim into ChatGPT, which generated the summary I quoted.

It's ironic that Tour is making similar allegations about OoL research as you make about ID. His informed and sustained critique of the field suggests that there are real issues to be answered. And he's not a lone voice. We live in interesting times.

[Mark]

On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 11:30:38 AM UTC+10, RonO wrote:

Could you clarify which alleged denial you're referring to? Are you saying that no ID proponents are willing to make any statement about their personal religious beliefs, and/or any comment on how scientific evidence of the inadequacy of naturalistic OoL relates to their belief in a transcendent creator?

[RonO]

Just to be clear what you got just told you what I told you, and you
only posted it in order to keep lying to yourself about the situation.
Reality is just what it is. You and Tour do not want to fill the gap
(#3) and you are just using the denial to lie to yourselves just long
enough to get you to the next bit of denial. Tour was the one that
defended the ID scam after their loss in Dover. He claimed to
understand that there was no ID science to support, but he wanted to
keep supporting the denial. There was no ID science that Tour wanted to
support then, and there hasn't been any produced since.

>
> It's ironic that Tour is making similar allegations about OoL research as you make about ID. His informed and sustained critique of the field suggests that there are real issues to be answered. And he's not a lone voice. We live in interesting times.
>

The origin of life scientists are trying to fill the gap that Tour
doesn't want to fill with his god. The only irony is that Tour wants
all efforts to fail. The last thing that he wants to do is be able to
fill the gap with his god. It would be worse than having science
develop a probable means for the origin of life. All scientists can do
is figure out the most probable scenario for the origin of life on this
planet under the conditions that existed over 3 billion years ago.
There is no reason to exclude the possibility that it occurred in some
less probable fashion. It could have had an origin someplace else or
out in space. You and Tour likely can't deal with the scenario of
god-like beings seeding life on earth because they wouldn't be the
Biblical gods.

The origin of life scientists haven't been able to fill the gap. The ID
perps and Tour never wanted the gap to be filled. On the science side
you just have failure due to the limitations of science. On the
creationist side you have a dishonest scam that has been perpetrated for
decades, and Tour and the ID perps never wanted to fill the gap. They
only use it like you do. It is only meant to allow Biblical
creationists of your type to lie to themselves about the current
reality. Not all Christians have to do that. That is the reality that
you have to run from.

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

The demise of IDiocy on TO when the Top Six god-of-the-gaps creationists
denial stupidity was given to them in such a way so that they could no
longer lie to themselves about how they had been wallowing in the
denial. Gap denial is just that, denial. Science can't explain
something so that allows the IDiot type creationists to lie to
themselves about what they know science can understand. The gap denial
was never meant to build anything positive. Tour has no inclination to
use the origin of life gap (#3 of the Top Six) to build any positive
understanding about nature. It is all just denial. IDiots understand
that science is the best means we have for understanding nature, and
nature is supposed to be their creation. They wanted to adopt the
mantle of science and claim it as their own in order to lie to
themselves about what it would tell them about nature. It turned out
that there was no ID creation science that the vast majority of IDiots
wanted to accomplish. None of them want to fill the Top Six gaps with
ID science. The designer of the Top Six is not the Biblical designer.
The ID perps likely understood that from the very beginning of the
creationist ID scam when creationism had a name change to intelligent
design in order to circumvent political blocks. They knew that
scientific creationism had failed to develop any functional creation
science that creationist wanted to support.

Behe and Denton have been telling the rubes about this reality for
decades, but all the rubes have wanted to hear from them is the denial.
The rubes were told that they couldn't expect much to change with any
IDiotic success, and that biological evolution was a fact of nature, but
IDiots refused to understand the parts that they didn't want to
understand. They only lapped up the denial that Behe and Denton fed to
them. About the last thing that any IDiotic creationist would have
wanted to happen was for Behe to confirm the existence of his 3 neutral
mutations that had to occur within a limited period of time over a
billion years ago to create some function in order to make the flagellum
his type of IC system. Behe would know what existed before, and how it
had changed during the time period that he was interested in. Most of
the IDiotic creationist support is still YEC, and even the antievolution
OEC would have to deny the ID science that Behe would be responsible for.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark Isaak]

On 9/16/23 7:43 PM, Mark wrote:
>
> [...] His informed and sustained critique of the field suggests that there are real issues to be answered. And he's not a lone voice. We live in interesting times.

Can you name any area of science which does not have real issues to be
answered? Isn't that what makes it science?

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

[broger...@gmail.com]

Ron uses a lot of words to say something simple. Here's the argument. IDers generate a list of things for which they find the scientific explanations incomplete or inadequate, and then argue that a designer was required to make those things happen. They then stop. A normal scientist (or a normal person looking for an explanation) would notice that whenever they say "A designer is required" to explain why the physical constants have the values they do, or how life got started, or how major taxonomic groups evolved, or how individual species originate, they are constraining what sort of designer they are talking about - it must have certain capabilities, must have been active in certain times and places, etc., and yet they never seem to try to put together a model of what the designer is like based on all the evidence they have from their "explanatory gaps," and they certainly do not make explicit attempts to show how such a designer is compatible with whatever version of God they personally think the designer actually is.

But as you said in response to Burkhard, ID is in a different category from science; it is not about details, evidence, or explanation, and cannot be judged by those standards.

[MarkE]

Okay. Ron, I sympathise to some extent. It can seem like ID sits on a hill taking potshots all day but never offering anything constructive. And among YECs, OECs, IDists, Progressive Creationists, Theistic Evolutionists, etc, there are clearly a wide range of often mutually contradictory beliefs and attempts to reconcile science and theology.

I myself read the scientific evidence as strongly favouring an old earth, but as you've seen I'm highly skeptical of the naturalistic origin of life, and also macro evolution. Do I have a coherently integrated set of theological and scientific beliefs? Far from it. Not what I'd prefer, but I learn to live with it.

[jillery]

My first impression is there's a lot of wiggle room between "answer
question X" and "utterly clueless". I suspect the judges will
evaluate the answers based on the former, and Tour et al will say that
proves they're "clueless".

My second impression is, there's a hidden "gotcha" in each of Tour's
questions. Unfortunately, I have forgotten more than I remember about
biochemistry to suss it out.

Question 4 is an odd one, even for Tour. He doesn't say how to show
the origin of specified information. @18:55 he gives an example; "I
have a thought in my mind". So what is the origin of his thought? By
his own words, it's not his mind, because he says the physical medium
is "secondary". Tour doesn't answer his own example.

--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge

[jillery]

On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 04:45:51 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>I myself read the scientific evidence as strongly favouring an old earth, but as you've seen I'm highly skeptical of the naturalistic origin of life, and also macro evolution. Do I have a coherently integrated set of theological and scientific beliefs? Far from it. Not what I'd prefer, but I learn to live with it.

Do you accept micro-evolution? If so, what do you think prevents
isolated populations from changing so much that they can no longer
reproduce with their parent populations?

[RonO]

You know for a fact that it doesn't just seem that way, it has been that
way since the ID scam started. There has been no forward movement to do
any positive ID science. The Top Six were the best Gap denial that the
scientific creationists had, and the ID perps haven't done any better
with them. Look At Tour, he only has the denial, and even claims to
know that he can't do anything but wallow in the denial. Tour is the
one that has claimed that he doesn't know how to do any ID science. The
god-of-the-gaps denial is all that he can think of to keep doing. Just
like you. The sad thing is that like you, Tour never wanted to
demonstrate that his god was responsible for filling that gap. The
designer that fills the current origin of life gap, just is not Biblical
enough for most IDiotic creationists still interested in wallowing in
the denial.

>
> I myself read the scientific evidence as strongly favouring an old earth, but as you've seen I'm highly skeptical of the naturalistic origin of life, and also macro evolution. Do I have a coherently integrated set of theological and scientific beliefs? Far from it. Not what I'd prefer, but I learn to live with it.

The Reason to Believe IDiots claim that they want to use science to
support their Biblical theology, but did it? They claim that they never
wanted to teach the ID scam in the public schools. All they wanted to
do was use the ID scam to build their Biblical creation model. They
have to reinterpret the Bible in a way that the YEC do not have to do,
and they end up denying their own gap denial arguments in order to fit
the order of creation into their model.

The Top Six just are not Biblical enough for Biblical literalists even
old earth Biblical literalists. They have to become nonliteral
literalists. The Reason to Believe model depends on how much of the
Bible that they can "reinterpret" and how much of the gap denial that
they can deny. About the last thing that any Biblical literalist wants
to see is for Meyer to demonstrate that some god-like designer is
responsible for the Cambrian explosion over half a billion years ago,
whether they are old earth literalists or young earth literalists.

The reason to believe model is just goofy when they try to fit the
Biblical order of creation of various lifeforms with what actually
happened. You see them trying to claim that sea creatures were created
after land plants even though you see the same Cambrian explosion denial
up at their web site that Meyer and the Scientific creationists have
used. They claim that the 25 million year period over half a billion
years ago is not long enough for that much evolution to have occurred.
The Cambrian explosion demonstrates that sea creatures evolved long
before there were land plants. Not only that, but you see them claiming
that whales were among the sea creatures created before land animals,
when the current whale fossil gap denial firmly places the evolution of
whales long after there were land animals on this earth.

I've given you the link many times, so you should know how stupid your
gap denial is at this time. The origin of life gap denial will never
support your Biblical beliefs. You need to give up on your Biblical
beliefs like Behe and Denton in order for understanding reality to be
useful for you. Nature, including the origin of life on this planet
just is not Biblical enough for anti-evolution Biblical creationists.

Ron Okimoto

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Google Groups is even more secretive than usual: it does not give me your email address,
so I can't tell whether you are Mark Isaak, MarkE, or a third Mark whom I
don't recall encountering before.

Probable translation: I, Ron Okimoto, can't make head nor tail of the scientific
content of Tour's challenges, so I will fall back on my usual
algorithm for talking about people whom I dearly hope to
be Biblically literalists and who care less about science than I, Ron O, do
[a rather low bar to clear].

> For those who may not know, "Ron Okimoto" is the name given to an early beta release of ChatGPT. It's nostalgic to see it still running here with these bot posts.

You have a great sense of humor. Thanks for the best laugh I've had all week so far.
[I might still be saying this on Friday. Time will tell.]

Ron O, of course, has no sense of humor when the joke is on him.
He went on a rampage in which "Tour" got replaced by "you" in a verbal salad
like the one he posted in the OP. Have you tried to run it through "ChatGPT 3.5"
to see how well the resulting summary aligns with your world outlook?

> The technology has come a long way. I asked ChatGPT 3.5 to make an assessment of the post above:
>
> "The argument presented appears to be critical of James Tour's challenge to scientists regarding the origin of life and suggests that his denial of certain scientific aspects doesn't align with the evidence supporting the concept of the origin of life. The author argues that Tour's challenge may not contribute to his religious beliefs and questions whether he can provide evidence for his claims. The argument also highlights the long history of scientific understanding of life on Earth and dismisses the idea of "God-of-the-gaps" denial as inadequate. Ultimately, the author contends that creationists like Tour should focus on reconciling their beliefs with established scientific knowledge."
>
> With all the bad news around AI, it's refreshing to see this evidence of progress: much less verbosity and repetition, losing the gratuitous insults, and now even some circumspection with the use of "appears to be".

Great summary. Too bad it sheds no light on the meaning of the word "denial" when it is modified by the
phrase "God-of-the-gaps". Worse yet, it seems to take at face value the claim of Tour having indulged
in denial about "certain scientific aspects" which Ron O made no attempt to identify.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:50:40 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:

Ah, here I see I am replying to you, MarkE.

I have a bunch of comments on Bill Rogers's prose, but then I want to remind you
of something I told you about and which you don't seem to have followed through with.

Good luck in getting Ron O to move out of his comfort zone, which a coherent
answer to these questions would entail.

If he thinks Bill Rogers made a good answer below, then he is deluding himself.

> > Ron uses a lot of words to say something simple. Here's the argument. IDers generate a list of things for which they find the scientific explanations incomplete or inadequate, and then argue that a designer was required to make those things happen. They then stop.

That's Ron O's private opinion. Bill Rogers seems to agree with it, but he is only
deluding himself if he sincerely believes that "IDers" like Behe or
Lennox or Meyer are like this. If he doesn't believe it, he is knowingly knocking
down a straw man below.

> A normal scientist (or a normal person looking for an explanation) would notice that whenever they say "A designer is required" to explain why the physical constants have the values they do, or how life got started, or how major taxonomic groups evolved, or how individual species originate, they are constraining what sort of designer they are talking about - it must have certain capabilities, must have been active in certain times and places, etc.,

The only grain of truth here is that all IDers talk about "designer" in the singular,
at least in the writings that I have seen. For the things Bill lists, distinct designers
are called for, and I have consistently talked about them in the plural.

And in the latter two cases, no intelligence beyond our own is required for designers,
only a slightly more advanced technology -- but one that researchers of the future might
be capable of within a few centuries.

As to times and places, that is already deducible in many cases from fossil evidence.

> and yet they never seem to try to put together a model of what the designer is like based on all the evidence they have from their "explanatory gaps," and they certainly do not make explicit attempts to show how such a designer is compatible with whatever version of God they personally think the designer actually is.

Here Bill Rogers has swallowed Ron O's spiel hook, line and sinker. I sometimes
wonder how much independent thinking he is capable of. My impression
is that he is a narrow specialist on malaria and hasn't had an original idea
about anything that it is worthwhile to have an original idea about.

> Okay. Ron, I sympathise to some extent.

Um...you do realize that Ron O didn't reply to you until after you posted this, don't you?

If you are ignoring Bill because you realize he has nothing to contribute to these side issues,
I congratulate you.

> It can seem like ID sits on a hill taking potshots all day but never offering anything constructive.

I am an exception. Especially where the origin of life ON EARTH is concerned, I
have posted at great length about the possibility of directed panspermia,
and a little about undirected panspermia [as in Arrhenius/Hoyle/Wickramasinghe].

> And among YECs, OECs, IDists, Progressive Creationists, Theistic Evolutionists, etc, there are clearly a wide range of often mutually contradictory beliefs and attempts to reconcile science and theology.

I've taken a temporary vacation from that kind of talk, confining myself to what scientists
know and do not know about OOL on the thread,

"The Alchemy and Biochemistry of OOL"
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/uX-9hX7ZvHI

I told you about this thread shortly before I began it,
but I haven't seen any sign that you've looked at it.

On Friday, I talked about other "Holy Grails", something you
showed some curiosity about:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/uX-9hX7ZvHI/m/kD7NIzCEBQAJ
Re: The Alchemy and Biochemistry of OOL
Sep 15, 2023, 4:10:37 PM

> I myself read the scientific evidence as strongly favouring an old earth, but as you've seen I'm highly skeptical of the naturalistic origin of life, and also macro evolution. Do I have a coherently integrated set of theological and scientific beliefs? Far from it. Not what I'd prefer, but I learn to live with it.

Perhaps you, too, would do well to learn some basics of biochemistry before
going on to express your skepticism.

> >
> > But as you said in response to Burkhard, ID is in a different category from science; it is not about details, evidence, or explanation, and cannot be judged by those standards.

Here is why I suggest you take the right kind of "vacation." There was no need
for you to make such admissions to Burkhard, and if you knew more about
the "Holy Grails," you would not even be tempted to make them.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[jillery]

On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:04:03 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Google Groups is even more secretive than usual: it does not give me your email address,
>so I can't tell whether you are Mark Isaak, MarkE, or a third Mark whom I
>don't recall encountering before.

Too bad you *still* won't learn how to use a real news server. "Mark"
has the same email as "MarkE" <me22...@gmail.com>


>On Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 7:35:39?PM UTC-4, Mark wrote:

There is no scientific basis for denial of evolution, which is the
basis for Tour's criticism of OoL and abiogenesis research.

>> For those who may not know, "Ron Okimoto" is the name given to an early beta release of ChatGPT. It's nostalgic to see it still running here with these bot posts.
>
>You have a great sense of humor. Thanks for the best laugh I've had all week so far.
>[I might still be saying this on Friday. Time will tell.]

I bet 100 Quatloos your sense of humor will improve as much by the end
of the week as it has in the last decade aka not at all.

>Ron O, of course, has no sense of humor when the joke is on him.
>He went on a rampage in which "Tour" got replaced by "you" in a verbal salad
>like the one he posted in the OP. Have you tried to run it through "ChatGPT 3.5"
>to see how well the resulting summary aligns with your world outlook?
>
>> The technology has come a long way. I asked ChatGPT 3.5 to make an assessment of the post above:
>>
>> "The argument presented appears to be critical of James Tour's challenge to scientists regarding the origin of life and suggests that his denial of certain scientific aspects doesn't align with the evidence supporting the concept of the origin of life. The author argues that Tour's challenge may not contribute to his religious beliefs and questions whether he can provide evidence for his claims. The argument also highlights the long history of scientific understanding of life on Earth and dismisses the idea of "God-of-the-gaps" denial as inadequate. Ultimately, the author contends that creationists like Tour should focus on reconciling their beliefs with established scientific knowledge."
>>
>> With all the bad news around AI, it's refreshing to see this evidence of progress: much less verbosity and repetition, losing the gratuitous insults, and now even some circumspection with the use of "appears to be".
>
>Great summary. Too bad it sheds no light on the meaning of the word "denial" when it is modified by the
>phrase "God-of-the-gaps". Worse yet, it seems to take at face value the claim of Tour having indulged
>in denial about "certain scientific aspects" which Ron O made no attempt to identify.

That's ok. Neither do you, Mark, Mark E, nor Tour, a Usenet
Hat-Trick.

[RonO]

The point that MarkE and Tour have to face is that they have no desire
to put their designer into that gap (#3 of the Top Six). It never
mattered that any of the questions be eventually answered by designer
design. In fact it would be about the last thing that Tour and MarkE
would want to accomplish. For the creationists who are anti science
because they have some type of "literal" interpretation of the Bible
that conflicts with what science has figured out about nature, the god
that is responsible for the existing origin of life gap is not the god
of the Bible. Tour knows this, and even claims that he doesn't know how
to do any ID science to support his religious beliefs. All he is
interested in is the denial so that he can lie to himself about reality
for a little while longer.

The challenge is bogus because Tour doesn't want to believe any answers,
even the one that could support some god being responsible. Even a lot
of old earth creationists can't deal with the Top Six in an honest and
straightforward manner. There is no mention of the microbial origin of
life over 3 billion years ago in the Bible. There is no billions of
years when microbial lifeforms swarmed around the planet, evolving
things like the IC flagellum over a billion years ago among the
microbial lifeforms that existed at that time. The Cambrian explosion
could not have occurred over a billion years ago within the designated
25 million year period because land plants have to be created before sea
creatures, and land plants do not show up in the fossil record until the
Ordivician, and the angiosperms mentioned in the Bible do not show up
until after the Permian extinction. There are no fossil gaps in the
human fossil record within the last 10 million years of the existence of
life on earth because a literal reading of the Bible claims that the
earth is less than 20,000 years old. There is no place for a Big Bang
over 13 billion years ago, nor the fine tuning of our solar system
around 4.5 billion years ago.

Ron Okimoto

[MarkE]

On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 11:35:41 AM UTC+10, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:50:40 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
>
> Ah, here I see I am replying to you, MarkE.

The other "Mark" is me also, I had briefly misconfigured my google account username to not include the "E".

I have been watching but not yet posted there.

>
> On Friday, I talked about other "Holy Grails", something you
> showed some curiosity about:
>
> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/uX-9hX7ZvHI/m/kD7NIzCEBQAJ
> Re: The Alchemy and Biochemistry of OOL
> Sep 15, 2023, 4:10:37 PM
> > I myself read the scientific evidence as strongly favouring an old earth, but as you've seen I'm highly skeptical of the naturalistic origin of life, and also macro evolution. Do I have a coherently integrated set of theological and scientific beliefs? Far from it. Not what I'd prefer, but I learn to live with it.
> Perhaps you, too, would do well to learn some basics of biochemistry before
> going on to express your skepticism.
> > >
> > > But as you said in response to Burkhard, ID is in a different category from science; it is not about details, evidence, or explanation, and cannot be judged by those standards.
> Here is why I suggest you take the right kind of "vacation." There was no need
> for you to make such admissions to Burkhard, and if you knew more about
> the "Holy Grails," you would not even be tempted to make them.

Bill mistakenly named Burkhard, it was in fact Gary Hurd. And my response was not an admission, but intended as a brief dismissal.

[MarkE]

Correction, it was Martin Harran.

[MarkE]

Thanks - I'm glad someone enjoyed it!

[Martin Harran]

On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 06:05:49 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 10:40:41?PM UTC+10, MarkE wrote:


<snip for focus>

>> Bill mistakenly named Burkhard, it was in fact Gary Hurd. And my response was not an admission, but intended as a brief dismissal.

You moan about others not engaging in meaningful discussion, yet you
respond to me with "a brief dismissal"; do you not see the double
standard in that?

As I have pointed out on that other thread, when you struggle to
answer a simple question, it can be useful to reflect on why you so
struggle.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 10:55:39 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 9/16/23 7:43 PM, Mark wrote:
> >
> > [...] His informed and sustained critique of the field suggests that there are real issues to be answered. And he's not a lone voice. We live in interesting times.
>
> Can you name any area of science which does not have real issues to be
> answered?

It is utterly ridiculous to talk about OOL this way -- which may be the reason you
neglected to keep any information about what "the field" is.

For comparison: the script of the ancient Indus Valley civilization has defied all attempts
over the last century and a half to decipher any of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script

Your bland generalization is like saying, in response to this enduring mystery,

"Can you name any area of the humanities that does not have real issues to be answered?"


If your sense of wonder has become this stunted, you may be heading for a joyless old age.

> Isn't that what makes it science?

Do you even CARE how great of a mystery OOL is? Even if you were to posit
panspermia of various sorts as the solution of the beginning of life on earth,
that would just "kick the can down the road" wrt the ultimate mystery of how life began,
GIVEN that one form of it not only began but evolved into our intelligent species.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 10:25:40 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:04:03 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Google Groups is even more secretive than usual: it does not give me your email address,
> >so I can't tell whether you are Mark Isaak, MarkE, or a third Mark whom I
> >don't recall encountering before.

> Too bad you *still* won't learn how to use a real news server. "Mark"
> has the same email as "MarkE" <me22...@gmail.com>

Too bad you couldn't tell Burkhard how your "real news server" looks
up the message-IDs of other people's posts. That ought to be
a real selling point for it.

Burkhard was talking in terms of continuing to post to talk.origins
and not wanting to use GG. I haven't seen much of him lately.
Coincidence?

OOL (prebiotic evolution) and abiogenesis research have precious
little to do with biological evolution. Hasn't Athel's misdirected
criticism of me on that score been enough to tell you that?

By "misdirected" I mean, "barking up the wrong tree."

Anyway, I'd love to see you try to connect the dots between
Tour's alleged creationism and his OOL challenge.

> >> For those who may not know, "Ron Okimoto" is the name given to an early beta release of ChatGPT. It's nostalgic to see it still running here with these bot posts.
> >
> >You have a great sense of humor. Thanks for the best laugh I've had all week so far.
> >[I might still be saying this on Friday. Time will tell.]

> I bet 100 Quatloos your sense of humor will improve as much by the end
> of the week as it has in the last decade aka not at all.

Mindless aping of a perennial farce by John Harshman noted.

> >Ron O, of course, has no sense of humor when the joke is on him.
> >He went on a rampage in which "Tour" got replaced by "you" in a verbal salad
> >like the one he posted in the OP. Have you tried to run it through "ChatGPT 3.5"
> >to see how well the resulting summary aligns with your world outlook?
> >
> >> The technology has come a long way. I asked ChatGPT 3.5 to make an assessment of the post above:
> >>
> >> "The argument presented appears to be critical of James Tour's challenge to scientists regarding the origin of life and suggests that his denial of certain scientific aspects doesn't align with the evidence supporting the concept of the origin of life. The author argues that Tour's challenge may not contribute to his religious beliefs and questions whether he can provide evidence for his claims. The argument also highlights the long history of scientific understanding of life on Earth and dismisses the idea of "God-of-the-gaps" denial as inadequate. Ultimately, the author contends that creationists like Tour should focus on reconciling their beliefs with established scientific knowledge."
> >>
> >> With all the bad news around AI, it's refreshing to see this evidence of progress: much less verbosity and repetition, losing the gratuitous insults, and now even some circumspection with the use of "appears to be".
> >
> >Great summary. Too bad it sheds no light on the meaning of the word "denial" when it is modified by the
> >phrase "God-of-the-gaps". Worse yet, it seems to take at face value the claim of Tour having indulged
> >in denial about "certain scientific aspects" which Ron O made no attempt to identify.

> That's ok. Neither do you, Mark, Mark E, nor Tour, a Usenet
> Hat-Trick.

Are you trying to make MarkE and me do Ron O's dirty work for him?

Or are you trying to join us by staying mum about what Ron O made no attempt to identify?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

You'll take any excuse to bully and attack, eh?

I won't bother replying to your content, since people who can read for
comprehension can, I think, understand my point well enough. And since
you don't want to understand it, there is no point explaining it to you.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 11:10:41 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 9/19/23 7:33 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 10:55:39 AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >> On 9/16/23 7:43 PM, Mark wrote:
> >>>
> >>> [...] His informed and sustained critique of the field suggests that there are real issues to be answered. And he's not a lone voice. We live in interesting times.
> >>
> >> Can you name any area of science which does not have real issues to be
> >> answered?
> >
> > It is utterly ridiculous to talk about OOL this way -- which may be the reason you
> > neglected to keep any information about what "the field" is.
> >
> > For comparison: the script of the ancient Indus Valley civilization has defied all attempts
> > over the last century and a half to decipher any of it.
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script
> >
> > Your bland generalization is like saying, in response to this enduring mystery,
> >
> > "Can you name any area of the humanities that does not have real issues to be answered?"
> >
> >
> > If your sense of wonder has become this stunted, you may be heading for a joyless old age.
> >
> >
> >> Isn't that what makes it science?
> >
> > Do you even CARE how great of a mystery OOL is? Even if you were to posit
> > panspermia of various sorts as the solution of the beginning of life on earth,
> > that would just "kick the can down the road" wrt the ultimate mystery of how life began,
> > GIVEN that one form of it not only began but evolved into our intelligent species.

> You'll take any excuse to bully and attack, eh?

Barking up the wrong tree again. If you want to see real bullying, you could
start with Ron O's unsuccessful attempt to have me banned for daring
to criticize his take on woolly rhinoceroses. I even complimented him
on one aspect of it, but he labeled it all "harassment" and didn't think
anyone should have to put up with such "assoholic" behavior.

Note, I said "start with". There are plenty of other examples I could show you
what a rich variety of things come under the category of *real* bully and attack.


To do you credit, though, you were one of the few [two, AFAIK] people
who responded to Ron O during that drawn out bullying and did NOT
play "good cop" to Ron O's "bad cop" by e.g. telling him to "just ignore" me.

> I won't bother replying to your content, since people who can read for
> comprehension can, I think, understand my point well enough.

Yes, the point of trying to belittle the magnitude of the OOL mystery should be
obvious to everyone, especially since lots of other t.o. regulars indulge in it.
Bill Rogers has done his share in the past, although on this thread he has
taken a different approach so far.

> And since
> you don't want to understand it, there is no point explaining it to you.

You did have a secondary point, but that was so general that it did not
contribute anything to our understanding of Tour's challenge.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 9:30:42 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 06:05:49 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 10:40:41?PM UTC+10, MarkE wrote:
>
>
> <snip for focus>
> >> Bill mistakenly named Burkhard, it was in fact Gary Hurd. And my response was not an admission, but intended as a brief dismissal.

> You moan about others not engaging in meaningful discussion, yet you
> respond to me with "a brief dismissal"; do you not see the double
> standard in that?

Since neither you nor MarkE has told us where that "brief dismissal"
took place, nobody can judge for themselves whether there
is a double standard involved, or whether it is a case
of "comparing apples and oranges."

For sure, you aren't engaging him in meaningful discussion here,
for the reason I've given just now.

>
> As I have pointed out on that other thread, when you struggle to
> answer a simple question, it can be useful to reflect on why you so
> struggle.

There is nothing simple about the "question" of whether

"ID is in a different category from science; it is not about details, evidence, or explanation, and cannot be judged by those standards."

If one does not go the route of a simple dismissal, it could take thousands
of lines to adequately deal with such a wrongheaded "question."

Been there, done that, still the message hasn't stuck to this hotbed
of anti-ID zealotry known as talk.origins.

> >Correction, it was Martin Harran.

One thing I'll say for you, Martin: you've confirmed that MarkE did not
guess wrong a second time.


Peter Nyikos

[Burkhard]

Can you give a single example where Behe goes beyond finding "gaps" in either ToE or OOL research and makes a positive counterproposal with testable characteristics, or at least points ot a roadmap that will eventuay lead to such theories?

[jillery]

On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 07:33:29 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote...


...yet another example of sounding clueless. Mark aka MarkE's comment
suggests having "issues" is a problem for science. That's what is
ridiculous. If anything, Isaak's counter is too understated to get
through to those who rely on Revealed Truth.

>On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 10:55:39?AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 9/16/23 7:43 PM, Mark wrote:
>> >
>> > [...] His informed and sustained critique of the field suggests that there are real issues to be answered. And he's not a lone voice. We live in interesting times.
>>
>> Can you name any area of science which does not have real issues to be
>> answered?
>
>It is utterly ridiculous to talk about OOL this way -- which may be the reason you
>neglected to keep any information about what "the field" is.
>
>For comparison: the script of the ancient Indus Valley civilization has defied all attempts
>over the last century and a half to decipher any of it.
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script
>
>Your bland generalization is like saying, in response to this enduring mystery,
>
>"Can you name any area of the humanities that does not have real issues to be answered?"
>
>
>If your sense of wonder has become this stunted, you may be heading for a joyless old age.
>
>
>> Isn't that what makes it science?
>
>Do you even CARE how great of a mystery OOL is? Even if you were to posit
>panspermia of various sorts as the solution of the beginning of life on earth,
>that would just "kick the can down the road" wrt the ultimate mystery of how life began,
>GIVEN that one form of it not only began but evolved into our intelligent species.

[jillery]

On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 07:50:25 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 10:25:40?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:04:03 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >Google Groups is even more secretive than usual: it does not give me your email address,
>> >so I can't tell whether you are Mark Isaak, MarkE, or a third Mark whom I
>> >don't recall encountering before.
>
>> Too bad you *still* won't learn how to use a real news server. "Mark"
>> has the same email as "MarkE" <me22...@gmail.com>
>
>Too bad you couldn't tell Burkhard how your "real news server" looks
>up the message-IDs of other people's posts. That ought to be
>a real selling point for it.

Too bad you rely so heavily on whataboutisms. Is GG apologetics a
real thing?

>Burkhard was talking in terms of continuing to post to talk.origins
>and not wanting to use GG. I haven't seen much of him lately.
>Coincidence?

Really? I see three posts by Burkhard, one each day for the last
three days, the last one a reply to you. Coincidence?

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2023 08:31:51 -0400, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:

>On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 07:33:29 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
><peter2...@gmail.com> wrote...
>
>
>...yet another example of sounding clueless. Mark aka MarkE's comment
>suggests having "issues" is a problem for science. That's what is
>ridiculous. If anything, Isaak's counter is too understated to get
>through to those who rely on Revealed Truth.
>

Since like many he seems to consider science to be "just
another religion", when there are unanswered questions it
tells him that the religion is a false one, since it's own
Revealed Truth has flaws.

IOW, science isn't a process of learning, but a belief
system; it *cannot* find errors as a major part of the
process, since such errors (to him) indicate that science
itself is Fatally Flawed (TM).

>
>>On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 10:55:39?AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> On 9/16/23 7:43 PM, Mark wrote:
>>> >
>>> > [...] His informed and sustained critique of the field suggests that there are real issues to be answered. And he's not a lone voice. We live in interesting times.
>>>
>>> Can you name any area of science which does not have real issues to be
>>> answered?
>>
>>It is utterly ridiculous to talk about OOL this way -- which may be the reason you
>>neglected to keep any information about what "the field" is.
>>
>>For comparison: the script of the ancient Indus Valley civilization has defied all attempts
>>over the last century and a half to decipher any of it.
>>
>>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script
>>
>>Your bland generalization is like saying, in response to this enduring mystery,
>>
>>"Can you name any area of the humanities that does not have real issues to be answered?"
>>
>>
>>If your sense of wonder has become this stunted, you may be heading for a joyless old age.
>>
>>
>>> Isn't that what makes it science?
>>
>>Do you even CARE how great of a mystery OOL is? Even if you were to posit
>>panspermia of various sorts as the solution of the beginning of life on earth,
>>that would just "kick the can down the road" wrt the ultimate mystery of how life began,
>>GIVEN that one form of it not only began but evolved into our intelligent species.
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[peter2...@gmail.com]

It's nice to see something from you again, Burkhard. Before I get around to your
words, I make a comment that segues rather easily into my reply to what you wrote.

On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 9:20:42 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 2:35:41 AM UTC+1, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:50:40 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> >
> > Ah, here I see I am replying to you, MarkE.
> >
> > I have a bunch of comments on Bill Rogers's prose, but then I want to remind you
> > of something I told you about and which you don't seem to have followed through with.
> > > On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 1:25:39 AM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 10:55:38 PM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
> > > > > On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 11:30:38 AM UTC+10, RonO wrote:

> > > > > > > For those who may not know, "Ron Okimoto" is the name given to an early beta release of ChatGPT. It's nostalgic to see it still running here with these bot posts.
> > > > > > You only wish you had that excuse. Why not tell us how the current
> > > > > > origin of life gap, that you spent so much time defining, fits into the
> > > > > > relgious beliefs that you want to support with that god-of-the-gaps
> > > > > > denial? Tour won't do it. Do you recall the Shermer-Meyer discussion
> > > > > > where Meyer refused to relate his god-of-the-gaps denial to his
> > > > > > religious beliefs? Denial for denial purposes, will never amount to
> > > > > > anything worth lying to yourself about. The sad thing is that all the
> > > > > > IDiots did it to support their religious beliefs, but what happened when
> > > > > > they realized that the Top Six wasn't anything that they wanted to
> > > > > > understand enough to keep lying to themselves about the denial?

> > > > > Could you clarify which alleged denial you're referring to? Are you saying that no ID proponents are willing to make any statement about their personal religious beliefs, and/or any comment on how scientific evidence of the inadequacy of naturalistic OoL relates to their belief in a transcendent creator?

Positive statements have been made by Michael Behe: a practicing Roman Catholic; he's rather
a traditionalist, as one might guess from him and his wife having had 8 children. I do believe
quite a few others are upfront about their personal religious beliefs. As to how they impact
their attitudes towards naturalistic OOL, I'll have to check to be sure. Behe has actually
argued in two of his books in favor of common descent, but that only makes sense
after OOL of life as we know it.

> > Good luck in getting Ron O to move out of his comfort zone, which a coherent
> > answer to these questions would entail.
> >
> > If he thinks Bill Rogers made a good answer below, then he is deluding himself.
> > > > Ron uses a lot of words to say something simple. Here's the argument. IDers generate a list of things for which they find the scientific explanations incomplete or inadequate, and then argue that a designer was required to make those things happen. They then stop.
> > That's Ron O's private opinion. Bill Rogers seems to agree with it, but he is only
> > deluding himself if he sincerely believes that "IDers" like Behe or
> > Lennox or Meyer are like this.

> Can you give a single example where Behe goes beyond finding "gaps" in either ToE or OOL research and makes a positive counterproposal with testable characteristics, or at least points ot a roadmap that will eventuay lead to such theories?

I'll have to do some checking on that, but I have explained several times in the past
how directed panspermia (DP) [1] could be tested some time in the future.
If the evidence for it turns out to be strong, their science could be the
starting point for the theory of the source of some characteristics of life
as we know it [2] and their evolution vs. design.

[1] This is the theory that OOL took place on an exoplanet and was sent here by intelligent species
who evolved there ca. 4 gigayears ago in the form of microorganisms. This is the brainchild
of world-class biochemists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, and I've been carrying the torch
for them here in talk.origins since I first read about it in 1996.

Behe wrote briefly about this in DBB, but he didn't show much interest in it.
As to why, I'll have to ask him. The whole ID-OOL connection might have
gotten a lot farther than my summary above, had he shown more interest.

[2] "The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
combine all the desirable properties within one single type
of organism or to send many different organisms is not
completely clear."
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
Simon and Schuster, 1981, p. 137

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2023 11:36:30 -0700 (PDT)
"peter2...@gmail.com" <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

[]

>
> I'll have to do some checking on that, but I have explained several times in the past
> how directed panspermia (DP) [1] could be tested some time in the future.
> If the evidence for it turns out to be strong, their science could be the
> starting point for the theory of the source of some characteristics of life
> as we know it [2] and their evolution vs. design.
>
> [1] This is the theory that OOL took place on an exoplanet and was sent here by intelligent species
> who evolved there ca. 4 gigayears ago in the form of microorganisms. This is the brainchild
> of world-class biochemists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, and I've been carrying the torch
> for them here in talk.origins since I first read about it in 1996.
>

>[]

I have some fondness for the idea that *some* pre-life chemicals were
created in a non-aqueous environment; especially seeing more and more
complex molecules (precursors?) being identified in asteroids.

This doesn't mean having to shift the OOL to a) aliens or b) some other
planet (though Mars did have a bit of a head start, possibly some
"infection" got carried on a meteorite from there to Earth?).

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 8:35:42 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 07:33:29 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote...
>
>
> ...yet another example of sounding clueless.

False advertising by you noted. No attempt is made below to explain the "sounding" part.

>Mark aka MarkE's comment
> suggests having "issues" is a problem for science.

Only because of MarkE's comment having been ripped out of context,

enabling you to put a perverse spin on what he wrote:

> That's what is
> ridiculous. If anything, Isaak's counter is too understated to get
> through to those who rely on Revealed Truth.

Where is your evidence that MarkE bases *anything* he writes about
science on Revealed Truth? Until you produce some, it is YOU that sound clueless.

> >On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 10:55:39?AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >> On 9/16/23 7:43 PM, Mark wrote:
> >> >
> >> > [...] His informed and sustained critique of the field suggests that there are real issues to be answered. And he's not a lone voice. We live in interesting times.

A straightforward interpretation of "real issues" IN CONTEXT is "real mysteries for scientists to solve."
I sweetened the pot below with a real mystery for people in the humanities (specifically, linguistics) to solve.

Mark Isaak was too understated to get your anti-ID spin-doctoring across
to anyone who isn't tuned in to your favorite wavelengths, jillery.

> >>
> >> Can you name any area of science which does not have real issues to be
> >> answered?
> >
> >It is utterly ridiculous to talk about OOL this way -- which may be the reason you
> >neglected to keep any information about what "the field" is.
> >
> >For comparison: the script of the ancient Indus Valley civilization has defied all attempts
> >over the last century and a half to decipher any of it.
> >
> >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script
> >
> >Your bland generalization is like saying, in response to this enduring mystery,
> >
> >"Can you name any area of the humanities that does not have real issues to be answered?"

None of this is very promising as grist for your spin-doctoring mill, jillery,
but perhaps you and Mark Isaak are on the same wavelength with the
word "issues." It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Mark will say about this.

> >
> >If your sense of wonder has become this stunted, you may be heading for a joyless old age.
> >
> >
> >> Isn't that what makes it science?
> >
> >Do you even CARE how great of a mystery OOL is? Even if you were to posit
> >panspermia of various sorts as the solution of the beginning of life on earth,
> >that would just "kick the can down the road" wrt the ultimate mystery of how life began,
> >GIVEN that one form of it not only began but evolved into our intelligent species.

As to your .sig below, jillery, the ancient Roman Stoic, Seneca, put it much better.

> To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge

Carl Sagan quotes Seneca at the very beginning of his book _Cosmos_.
If you can't get your hands easily on a copy, I can give you Seneca's words
any time I'm home and can get my hands on my copy.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

John, it's great to see an on-topic response from you to something I've posted.
It inspired me to think of something that isn't just a variation on older arguments or observations.

On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 3:10:42 PM UTC-4, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Sep 2023 11:36:30 -0700 (PDT)
> "peter2...@gmail.com" <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> []
> >
> > I'll have to do some checking on that, but I have explained several times in the past
> > how directed panspermia (DP) [1] could be tested some time in the future.
> > If the evidence for it turns out to be strong, their science could be the
> > starting point for the theory of the source of some characteristics of life
> > as we know it [2] and their evolution vs. design.
> >
> > [1] This is the theory that OOL took place on an exoplanet and was sent here by intelligent species
> > who evolved there ca. 4 gigayears ago in the form of microorganisms. This is the brainchild
> > of world-class biochemists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, and I've been carrying the torch
> > for them here in talk.origins since I first read about it in 1996.
> >
> >[]
>
> I have some fondness for the idea that *some* pre-life chemicals were
> created in a non-aqueous environment; especially seeing more and more
> complex molecules (precursors?) being identified in asteroids.

You mean meteorites, don't you? But you hit the mark with "precursors":
it seems that these molecules are not nucleotides or nucleosides,
which would make them individual units of RNA or DNA, but just nucleobases:

"In March 2015, NASA scientists reported that, for the first time, complex DNA and RNA organic compounds of life, including uracil, cytosine and thymine, have been formed in the laboratory under outer space conditions, using starting chemicals, such as pyrimidine, found in meteorites. Pyrimidine, like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), another carbon-rich compound, may have been formed in red giants or in interstellar dust and gas clouds, according to the scientists.[7] Thymine has not been found in meteorites, which suggests the first strands of DNA had to look elsewhere to obtain this building block. Thymine likely formed within some meteorite parent bodies, but may not have persisted within these bodies due to an oxidation reaction with hydrogen peroxide.[8]"
--- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thymine

> This doesn't mean having to shift the OOL to a) aliens

I dislike the word "aliens," with its pejorative connotations. If earth life really
is the result of DP [see my reply to Burkhard for what that might entail]
then we may owe our very existence to intelligent beings that evolved on an exoplanet.
Unable to find a suitable planet for colonization within N (a large number)
light years, they ensured that life would go on for billions of years
after their extinction.

This entailed a degree of altruism that few t.o. regulars find plausible.
I have no problem with it myself, though, and neither did Crick or Orgel.

>or b) some other
> planet (though Mars did have a bit of a head start, possibly some
> "infection" got carried on a meteorite from there to Earth?).

Here is a fascinating possibility that occurred to me just now.
Perhaps prokaryotes did originate from OOL having taken place on earth,
but a chance meteorite took some to Mars. And there, oxygen-tolerant
prokaryotes (and, later, eukaryotes) got a big head start in shallow seas on Mars
that didn't have an enormous amount of ferrous iron oxide dissolved in them,
reacting with most of the oxygen.

Those evolutionary events were set back on earth for something like 2 gigayears, until
the "poisonous" oxygen from photosynthesis had a chance to accumulate
in the environment, and life had to adapt to it one way or another. Another
chance meteorite could have brought some from Mars, ready and raring to go
on a spree of becoming a big part of the earth's biosphere.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[MarkE]

We all make choices with limited time to make responses. As I briefly noted (and Bill affirmed), your question conflated different categories, and responding to that in detail was a rabbit hole I wasn't willing to go down at that moment.

[broger...@gmail.com]

Well, I'm personally happy to see you admit that ID and science are in different categories, but I suspect that many backers of ID would not be so quick to say that.

[jillery]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2023 12:12:29 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 8:35:42?AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 07:33:29 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote...
>>
>>
>> ...yet another example of sounding clueless.
>
>False advertising by you noted. No attempt is made below to explain the "sounding" part.

To the contrary, my entire post identifies and explains the "sounding"
part. That makes your comments here more examples of you sounding
clueless.

>>Mark aka MarkE's comment
>> suggests having "issues" is a problem for science.
>
>Only because of MarkE's comment having been ripped out of context,
>enabling you to put a perverse spin on what he wrote:

Really? Throwing your own words back at you, until you produce some
context that shows my comments are a "perverse spin", it is YOU that

sound clueless.


>> That's what is
>> ridiculous. If anything, Isaak's counter is too understated to get
>> through to those who rely on Revealed Truth.
>
>Where is your evidence that MarkE bases *anything* he writes about
>science on Revealed Truth? Until you produce some, it is YOU that sound clueless.

Your comments here rote and mindless objections. Don't you know MarkE
is quite open and vocal about his "reservations" wrt to
macro-evolution and his support for God as explanation? They are
major themes of his posts. Perhaps if you spent more time reading for
comprehension and less time posting mindless noise...

>> >On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 10:55:39?AM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> >> On 9/16/23 7:43 PM, Mark wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > [...] His informed and sustained critique of the field suggests that there are real issues to be answered. And he's not a lone voice. We live in interesting times.
>
>A straightforward interpretation of "real issues" IN CONTEXT is "real mysteries for scientists to solve."

A distinction that doesn't make MarkE's comments any less ridiculous.
Either way, such things are not a problem for science. To the
contrary, they are the point of science.

>I sweetened the pot below with a real mystery for people in the humanities (specifically, linguistics) to solve.

Only you would describe your clueless comment below as sweetening the
pot.

>Mark Isaak was too understated to get your anti-ID spin-doctoring across
>to anyone who isn't tuned in to your favorite wavelengths, jillery.

Yeah, I get that a lot from willfully clueless trolls.

>> >> Can you name any area of science which does not have real issues to be
>> >> answered?
>> >
>> >It is utterly ridiculous to talk about OOL this way -- which may be the reason you
>> >neglected to keep any information about what "the field" is.
>> >
>> >For comparison: the script of the ancient Indus Valley civilization has defied all attempts
>> >over the last century and a half to decipher any of it.
>> >
>> >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script
>> >
>> >Your bland generalization is like saying, in response to this enduring mystery,
>> >
>> >"Can you name any area of the humanities that does not have real issues to be answered?"
>
>None of this is very promising as grist for your spin-doctoring mill, jillery,
>but perhaps you and Mark Isaak are on the same wavelength with the
>word "issues." It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Mark will say about this.
>
>
>> >
>> >If your sense of wonder has become this stunted, you may be heading for a joyless old age.
>> >
>> >
>> >> Isn't that what makes it science?
>> >
>> >Do you even CARE how great of a mystery OOL is? Even if you were to posit
>> >panspermia of various sorts as the solution of the beginning of life on earth,
>> >that would just "kick the can down the road" wrt the ultimate mystery of how life began,
>> >GIVEN that one form of it not only began but evolved into our intelligent species.
>
>As to your .sig below, jillery, the ancient Roman Stoic, Seneca, put it much better.

Too bad Seneca doesn't post to T.O. He might complain about how your
.sig associates your employers with clueless trolls.

>> To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge
>
>Carl Sagan quotes Seneca at the very beginning of his book _Cosmos_.
>If you can't get your hands easily on a copy, I can give you Seneca's words
>any time I'm home and can get my hands on my copy.
>
>
>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>University of So. Carolina at Columbia
>http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

--

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2023 15:49:16 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:

You dismiss science's exploration of OOL because it involves
speculation and sketchiness but make no attempt to explain you don't
regard speculation and sketchiness as a issue with ID.

In the thread about Deamer's book, you moaned about people not being
willing to discuss non-naturalistic explanations of origins; l offered
to engage in such a discussion, but you have not taken up my offer.

It seems to me that you make many criticisms of the ToE but don't
really have anything better to offer in its place.

[MarkE]

Okay, a short overview, FWIW. My interpretation of the scientific evidence is that even the simplest life is beyond the reach of natural causes, e.g. for the reasons outlined in my recent posts. My Christian faith (Reformed, Evangelical) recognises the God of the Bible the alternative explanation.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1). Personally, I lean towards an old earth view, but with direct divine intervention: God suspends "natural" laws and manipulates matter, generates and embeds information, and creates living things preloaded with capacity for adaptation (microevolution). God also created the physical laws themselves ("...sustaining all things by his powerful word." Hebrews 1:3a), so everything is ultimately "supernatural".

This view is not at odds with science, but celebrates it as the pursuit of understanding a God's creation, and utilising this knowledge to work as secondary creators in the world. This in borne out by the fact that many scientists are Christians. I would say there's a risk of error that goes both ways: for Christians, being too ready to invoke a god-of-the-gaps, and for materialists, disallowing supernatural intervention out of hand.

How about you?

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:25:43 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Sep 2023 12:12:29 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 8:35:42?AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> >> On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 07:33:29 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> >> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote...
> >>
> >>
> >> ...yet another example of sounding clueless.
> >
> >False advertising by you noted. No attempt is made below to explain the "sounding" part.

This statement by me was a compromise between the use your allies Ron O and John Harshman
make of words like "address" and "explain" and the one to which I naturally use it.
I see you distancing yourself from their use below, which amounts to "gave such
a knockdown argument that I don't want to talk about it."

> To the contrary, my entire post identifies and explains the "sounding"
> part.

The connection is all in your mind. You shifted to making an unexplained
implication about MarkE from which you are furiously backpedaling below.

> That makes your comments here more examples of you sounding
> clueless.

Second half of a GIGO noted.

> >>Mark aka MarkE's comment
> >> suggests having "issues" is a problem for science.
> >
> >Only because of MarkE's comment having been ripped out of context,
> >enabling you to put a perverse spin on what he wrote:

> Really? Throwing your own words back at you, until you produce some
> context that shows my comments are a "perverse spin", it is YOU that
> sound clueless.

Concerted attempt to deflect attention from your backpedal below, noted.

>
> >> That's what is
> >> ridiculous. If anything, Isaak's counter is too understated to get
> >> through to those who rely on Revealed Truth.
> >
> >Where is your evidence that MarkE bases *anything* he writes about
> >science on Revealed Truth? Until you produce some, it is YOU that sound clueless.


> Your comments here rote and mindless objections.

Your deflection attempt has turned libelous, and it has intensified:
even by the standards you have adopted, you made no attempt
to address my question; instead, you took refuge in equivocation
that constitutes your backpedal below.

>Don't you know MarkE
> is quite open and vocal about his "reservations" wrt to
> macro-evolution and his support for God as explanation?

Besides being a major backpedal from "Revealed Truth" to "God",
it is also a dirty debating trick known as "moving the goalposts."

But you are not yet safe from scrutiny: after you posted your
spin-doctoring, MarkE made a direct reply to your adversary
Martin Harran, in which he did use "God" as an *alternative* explanation
for much of what goes on in evolution. But he fell far short of
claiming that God actually *is* the *correct* explanation.

He also explained his *personal* views, which go far beyond mine; OTOH they
also go FAR beyond "Revealed Truth."


Your use of "Revealed Truth" suggests that you have swallowed the interminably repetitious
rants of your buddy Ron O against against Glenn, MarkE, "Kalk"... hook, line, and sinker.

And now you libelously project Ron O's habits onto me:

>They are
> major themes of his posts. Perhaps if you spent more time reading for
> comprehension and less time posting mindless noise...

"mindless noise" is a perfect description of Ron O's rants on just about everything,
which inspired MarkE's joke about "Ron Okimoto" being an early version of ChatGPT.

Your reaction to that joke shows that you have NO sense of humor
when the joke is on someone whom you have ardently supported in the past.


CONCLUDED in next reply to this bent-out-of-shape post of yours.
Perhaps tomorrow, but if not, then next week.


Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2023 08:32:28 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote...

... yet another self-parody. Not sure for what purpose. Perhaps to
challenge other willfully clueless trolls.

<the following left uncommented for documentation purposes>

[Gary Hurd]

On Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 12:00:39 PM UTC-7, RonO wrote:

> Can Tour do any better?
>
> Really, Tour is the one that has to put up or shut up. Why should
> science have to know what happened to create life over 3 billion years
> ago on this planet? We already have figured out enough about the
> existence of life on this planet to make the Biblical young earth,
> geocentric, flat-earth, "models" untenable. Even the old earth "models"
> have issues. The Bible claims that the sun and moon were created on the
> 4th day after land plants (including the agriculturally relevant
> angiosperms). The reason to believe IDiots have to reinterpret the
> Bible so that the sun and moon were just made visible. Can Tour make
> that reinterpretation?
>
> Creationists like Tour have always needed to deal with what we have
> already figured out, not what we haven't figured out at this time.
>
> Ron Okimoto

James Tour’s latest bullshit claimed there are 5 "impossible" problems;

1. Polypeptides
2. Polynucleotides
3. Polysaccharides
4. Specified Information
5. Assembly of a Living Cell

Let's consider item #1.
There are many individual studies just this year. Here is a good review from last year;

Rimola A, Balucani N, Ceccarelli C, Ugliengo P. Tracing the Primordial Chemical Life of Glycine: A Review from Quantum Chemical Simulations. Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Apr 12;23(8):4252. doi: 10.3390/ijms23084252. PMID: 35457069; PMCID: PMC9030215.
Review article.

“Glycine (Gly), NH2CH2COOH, is the simplest amino acid. Although it has not been directly detected in the interstellar gas-phase medium, it has been identified in comets and meteorites, and its synthesis in these environments has been simulated in terrestrial laboratory experiments. Likewise, condensation of Gly to form peptides in scenarios resembling those present in a primordial Earth has been demonstrated experimentally. Thus, Gly is a paradigmatic system for biomolecular building blocks to investigate how they can be synthesized in astrophysical environments, transported and delivered by fragments of asteroids (meteorites, once they land on Earth) and comets (interplanetary dust particles that land on Earth) to the primitive Earth, and there react to form biopolymers as a step towards the emergence of life.”

As for #2, there are again many examples.

We see extraterrestrial examples;
Oba, Y., Takano, Y., Furukawa, Y. et al. 2022 “Identifying the wide diversity of extraterrestrial purine and pyrimidine nucleobases in carbonaceous meteorites. Nat Commun 13, 2008 (2022).

I recall Tour specifically called out Jack Szostak. That can go back decades;

David P. Bartel Jack W. Szostak
1993 “Isolation of New Ribozymes from a Large Pool of Random Sequences” Science261,1411-1418(1993).DOI:10.1126/science.7690155

Ekland, EH, JW Szostak, and DP Bartel
1995 "Structurally complex and highly active RNA ligases derived from random RNA sequences" Science 21 July 1995: Vol. 269. no. 5222, pp. 364 - 370

Szostak, J.W. The eightfold path to non-enzymatic RNA replication. J Syst Chem 3, 2 (2012).

Item #3, Polysaccharides, is a bit odd to me. What Prof. Tour seems to be digging for is the key saccaride Ribose.

This gives you some good background.

Springsteen G, Joyce GF.
2004 "Selective derivatization and sequestration of ribose from a prebiotic mix" J Am Chem Soc. 2004 Aug 11;126(31):9578-83

Item #4, Specified Information has an interesting history.

It starts 50 yers ago with Leslie Orgel in his
1973 book “The Origins of life: Molecules and Natural Selection" New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Here was the first use of “specified complexity” as an attribute of life (19n 1973). Orgel was contrasting the specified structure of a crystal which is not alive, and the complexity of a bowl of crude oil which is not alive, with the “specified complexity” of things that are alive. “Irreducible Complexity” was originally proposed by Herman J. Muller in 1918. He called it "interlocking complexity," and showed how it was supporting evolutionary theory. That original paper was, "Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", Hermann J. Muller, Genetics, Vol 3, No 5: 422-499, Sept 1918.

ID creationist William Dembski bent this idea. He claimed that the specified complexity of Orgel was godlike in his 2002 book "No Free Lunch. Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence." Lanham" Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

He had earlier exposed the Intelligent Design effort as simple creationism in his 1999 article for the Christian magazine Touchstone. Titled, “Signs of Intelligence,” Dembski confirmed the foundation of ID in John 1 when he assured readers that "Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory." (“Signs of Intelligence,” 1999, Touchstone magazine).

[Lawyer Daggett]

Bloody run on lines are a pain in the ass. Format your posts.
Meanwhile, it's a dead end point of no use. Random condensation of amino acids is
of zero consequence to the origins of life. You ought to know and accept this.

> As for #2, there are again many examples.
>
> We see extraterrestrial examples;
> Oba, Y., Takano, Y., Furukawa, Y. et al. 2022 “Identifying the wide diversity of extraterrestrial purine and pyrimidine nucleobases in carbonaceous meteorites. Nat Commun 13, 2008 (2022).
>
> I recall Tour specifically called out Jack Szostak. That can go back decades;
>
> David P. Bartel Jack W. Szostak
> 1993 “Isolation of New Ribozymes from a Large Pool of Random Sequences” Science261,1411-1418(1993).DOI:10.1126/science.7690155
>
> Ekland, EH, JW Szostak, and DP Bartel
> 1995 "Structurally complex and highly active RNA ligases derived from random RNA sequences" Science 21 July 1995: Vol. 269. no. 5222, pp. 364 - 370
>
> Szostak, J.W. The eightfold path to non-enzymatic RNA replication. J Syst Chem 3, 2 (2012).

Random polymerization of ribonucleotides may be, and probably is of significance.
But extra-terrestrial sources of ribonucleotides is just silly. You're not going to get
enough production of significant polymers from some primordial soup made from
the rain of micrometeorites. It's nonsense. What's necessary is a flux of activated
ribonucleosides (potentially ribonucleotide triphosphates but alternatives need to
be considered). You need the synthetic engine that makes more and more and more,
akin to a dynamic flow chemical engineering solution.

> Item #3, Polysaccharides, is a bit odd to me. What Prof. Tour seems to be digging for is the key saccaride Ribose.
>
> This gives you some good background.
>
> Springsteen G, Joyce GF.
> 2004 "Selective derivatization and sequestration of ribose from a prebiotic mix" J Am Chem Soc. 2004 Aug 11;126(31):9578-83

I don't consider polysaccharide synthesis a problem, nor the synthesis of ribose.

> Item #4, Specified Information has an interesting history.
>
> It starts 50 yers ago with Leslie Orgel in his
> 1973 book “The Origins of life: Molecules and Natural Selection" New York: John Wiley and Sons.
>
> Here was the first use of “specified complexity” as an attribute of life (19n 1973). Orgel was contrasting the specified structure of a crystal which is not alive, and the complexity of a bowl of crude oil which is not alive, with the “specified complexity” of things that are alive. “Irreducible Complexity” was originally proposed by Herman J. Muller in 1918. He called it "interlocking complexity," and showed how it was supporting evolutionary theory. That original paper was, "Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", Hermann J. Muller, Genetics, Vol 3, No 5: 422-499, Sept 1918.
>
> ID creationist William Dembski bent this idea. He claimed that the specified complexity of Orgel was godlike in his 2002 book "No Free Lunch. Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence." Lanham" Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
>
> He had earlier exposed the Intelligent Design effort as simple creationism in his 1999 article for the Christian magazine Touchstone. Titled, “Signs of Intelligence,” Dembski confirmed the foundation of ID in John 1 when he assured readers that "Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory." (“Signs of Intelligence,” 1999, Touchstone magazine).

The "specified complexity" argument is a gross misunderstanding of information
science. It's proponents typically abandon it after some time of trying to defend it.
Dembski has largely abandoned it.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 12:20:44 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Sep 2023 08:32:28 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote...
>
> ... yet another self-parody.

Yet another shameless piece of false advertising by jillery.

This time even jillery cannot claim that she made an attempt to justify
her nebulous allegation.

I say "nebulous" because jillery has never, in my experience, explained what
"self-parody" means in The World According to Jillery.

John Harshman parroted the word (but without the hyphen) in allegedly
characterizing something I wrote. But when I challenged him
to explain why he was using a figurative sense of the term that
is at odds with etymology, he clammed up. He never explained what the term
meant to him, nor did he try to answer my question of whether HE knew
what jillery meant by the term.

> Not sure for what purpose.

"Not sure" is jillery's all-purpose announcement of what is almost certain
to be GIGO. And she doesn't disappoint her fans here.

>Perhaps to
> challenge other willfully clueless trolls.

More false advertising, to hide the fact that jillery is indulging in empty
bravado in emulation of the Black Knight of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail,"
after having been subjected to the equivalent of
cutting off both arms of the original Black Knight below.

[The Black knight, undaunted, tried to fight on with the use of his legs,
with the end result of both of them having been cut off, but even
that did not end the Black Knight's torrent of abuse.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_(Monty_Python)

Jillery is just the latest in a long line of Black Knight imitators in talk.origins.
I will be documenting another very recent imitator in reply to jillery either tomorrow or early
next week. Needless to say, the two are on good terms with each other.

>
> <the following left uncommented for documentation purposes>

All this misdirection is probably designed to convince people who
have put me in a killfile (either actual or *de* *facto*) that there is nothing below
that it is worthwhile for them to read.

And that might make sense from *their* POV. It might severely
cramp the style of their artificially manufactured disdain for me if they
bothered to read it.

In the immortal words of Yeshua Messiah (Jesus Christ): Those who have eyes to see,
let them see!


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 4:15:44 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:40:44 PM UTC-4, Gary Hurd wrote:

Finally, someone (Gary Hurd) actually looks in detail at the challenge.
Below, his commentary comes in for some criticism from both Lawyer Daggett and myself.

But then, talk.origins is a good medium for thrashing out differences of opinion,
as long as it is done in good faith. So let the chips fall where they may.

> > James Tour’s latest bullshit claimed there are 5 "impossible" problems;
> >
> > 1. Polypeptides
> > 2. Polynucleotides
> > 3. Polysaccharides
> > 4. Specified Information
> > 5. Assembly of a Living Cell

These were the *topics* of the different problems. Tour had specific challenges
pertaining to each one.

> > Let's consider item #1.
> > There are many individual studies just this year. Here is a good review from last year;
> >
> > Rimola A, Balucani N, Ceccarelli C, Ugliengo P. Tracing the Primordial Chemical Life of Glycine: A Review from Quantum Chemical Simulations. Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Apr 12;23(8):4252. doi: 10.3390/ijms23084252. PMID: 35457069; PMCID: PMC9030215.
> > Review article.
> >
> > “Glycine (Gly), NH2CH2COOH, is the simplest amino acid. Although it has not been directly detected in the interstellar gas-phase medium, it has been identified in comets and meteorites, and its synthesis in these environments has been simulated in terrestrial laboratory experiments. Likewise, condensation of Gly to form peptides in scenarios resembling those present in a primordial Earth has been demonstrated experimentally. Thus, Gly is a paradigmatic system for biomolecular building blocks to investigate how they can be synthesized in astrophysical environments, transported and delivered by fragments of asteroids (meteorites, once they land on Earth) and comets (interplanetary dust particles that land on Earth) to the primitive Earth, and there react to form biopolymers as a step towards the emergence of life.

> Bloody run on lines are a pain in the ass. Format your posts.

The above paragraph from Hurd would be acceptable if there were a quotation mark at the end,
but here someone could be left wondering whether the quote continues later. [It doesn't.]

> Meanwhile, it's a dead end point of no use. Random condensation of amino acids is
> of zero consequence to the origins of life. You ought to know and accept this.

Yes, Tour asked for polypeptides of a certain length. Amino acids are just "building blocks."
Actually, "legos" would be a somewhat better term, because what distinguishes polypeptides from
Fox's "proteinoids" is that they are linear structures of amino acids joined by peptide bonds.
[Otherwise they don't "snap together" in the right way.]

> > As for #2, there are again many examples.
> >
> > We see extraterrestrial examples;
> > Oba, Y., Takano, Y., Furukawa, Y. et al. 2022 “Identifying the wide diversity of extraterrestrial purine and pyrimidine nucleobases in carbonaceous meteorites. Nat Commun 13, 2008 (2022).
> >
> > I recall Tour specifically called out Jack Szostak. That can go back decades;
> >
> > David P. Bartel Jack W. Szostak
> > 1993 “Isolation of New Ribozymes from a Large Pool of Random Sequences” Science261,1411-1418(1993).DOI:10.1126/science.7690155
> >
> > Ekland, EH, JW Szostak, and DP Bartel
> > 1995 "Structurally complex and highly active RNA ligases derived from random RNA sequences" Science 21 July 1995: Vol. 269. no. 5222, pp. 364 - 370
> >
> > Szostak, J.W. The eightfold path to non-enzymatic RNA replication. J Syst Chem 3, 2 (2012).

> Random polymerization of ribonucleotides may be, and probably is of significance.
> But extra-terrestrial sources of ribonucleotides is just silly.

You might have done well to tell Hurd about the difference between nucleobases
and nucleosides/nucleotides. See his first attempt at a relevant citation, above.

> You're not going to get
> enough production of significant polymers from some primordial soup made from
> the rain of micrometeorites. It's nonsense. What's necessary is a flux of activated
> ribonucleosides (potentially ribonucleotide triphosphates but alternatives need to
> be considered). You need the synthetic engine that makes more and more and more,
> akin to a dynamic flow chemical engineering solution.

Getting closer to Tour's challenge: as with polypeptides, a specific kind of link is asked
for in Tour's challenge. The background for his distinctions was already in the Talk.Origins Archive in 2010:

"However, while these reactions make RNA-like polymers they do not yet solve the problem of the stereospecific 3’-5’ concatenation of monomers (Orgel 2004), found in all living organisms. Both the lipid-assisted synthesis and polymerization on montmorillonite produce mixes of 2’-5’ and 3’-5’ bonds. Yet in the latter there is a preference towards 3’-5’ bonds (up to 74 %) which is promising."
--https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html

Tour wants greater far greater specificity than 74%.

> > Item #3, Polysaccharides, is a bit odd to me. What Prof. Tour seems to be digging for is the key saccaride Ribose.
> >
> > This gives you some good background.
> >
> > Springsteen G, Joyce GF.
> > 2004 "Selective derivatization and sequestration of ribose from a prebiotic mix" J Am Chem Soc. 2004 Aug 11;126(31):9578-83

> I don't consider polysaccharide synthesis a problem, nor the synthesis of ribose.

Under primitive earth conditions? Tour wants a specific disaccharide in quantity,
with 90% purity.

> > Item #4, Specified Information has an interesting history.
> >
> > It starts 50 yers ago with Leslie Orgel in his
> > 1973 book “The Origins of life: Molecules and Natural Selection" New York: John Wiley and Sons.
> >
> > Here was the first use of “specified complexity” as an attribute of life (19n 1973). Orgel was contrasting the specified structure of a crystal which is not alive, and the complexity of a bowl of crude oil which is not alive, with the “specified complexity” of things that are alive.

Hurd shifts without warning to a completely different topic, and promptly produces a historical howler:

> > “Irreducible Complexity” was originally proposed by Herman J. Muller in 1918.

This is one of the most enduring falsehoods in the anti-ID literature.
Muller only talked about SOME components being essential. Irreducible complexity
says, by definition, that EACH AND EVERY component is essential.

> > He called it "interlocking complexity," and showed how it was supporting evolutionary theory. That original paper was, "Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", Hermann J. Muller, Genetics, Vol 3, No 5: 422-499, Sept 1918.

Now Hurd tries to get back to specified complexity, whose ID specialist is Dembski, NOT Behe
as is the case with irreducible complexity. Hurd leads off with a claim that Dembski
(also unlike Behe) is a creationist:

> > ID creationist William Dembski bent this idea. He claimed that the specified complexity of Orgel was godlike in his 2002 book "No Free Lunch. Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence." Lanham" Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Hurd seems to think we are all "godlike," since we have intelligence far surpassing
that of any other known species, and are quite capable of producing specified complexity.

> >
> > He had earlier exposed the Intelligent Design effort as simple creationism in his 1999 article for the Christian magazine Touchstone.

This is Gary Hurd at his spin-doctoring worst.

> > Titled, “Signs of Intelligence,” Dembski confirmed the foundation of ID in John 1 when he assured readers that "Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory." (“Signs of Intelligence,” 1999, Touchstone magazine).

Dembski is very erratic, but only someone as simple-minded as Hurd would mistake such a general
statement for an admission of creationism.

> The "specified complexity" argument is a gross misunderstanding of information
> science. It's proponents typically abandon it after some time of trying to defend it.
> Dembski has largely abandoned it.

Unfortunately, Leslie Orgel is no longer alive to defend himself. Do you really think
he had a gross misunderstanding of specified complexity? Or are you merely
attacking everyone who tries to use it to promote ID? Tour, of course, is doing just that.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

PS I'd like to see either you, Daggett, or Gary Hurd explain where the "gross misunderstanding"
is in what Tour says about the specified information in RNA and DNA.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 7:25:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 5:25:43 PM UTC+10, Martin Harran wrote:

> > It seems to me that you make many criticisms of the ToE but don't
> > really have anything better to offer in its place.

> Okay, a short overview, FWIW. My interpretation of the scientific evidence is that even the simplest life is beyond the reach of natural causes, e.g. for the reasons outlined in my recent posts. My Christian faith (Reformed, Evangelical) recognises the God of the Bible the alternative explanation.

It's good to see you so forthright about your beliefs, yet falling well short of claiming
that they can be shown to be the best ones. Few others here are as candid; I am one of that few,
but my beliefs are different. Since I have written about them elsewhere, I'll not dwell
on them here.

>
> "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1). Personally, I lean towards an old earth view, but with direct divine intervention: God suspends "natural" laws and manipulates matter, generates and embeds information, and creates living things preloaded with capacity for adaptation (microevolution).

I'm not sure of the need for suspension. Quantum mechanics allows for
a certain amount of leeway. Combine that with chaos theory and
catastrophe theory, and there may be enough to push evolution in various directions.

I do not like the idea of God "poofing" whole new animals into existence;
for one thing, there are too many things all vertebrates have in common.
It suggests a bunch of junior angels at work rather than a being with
the intelligence and power to create or even just design a universe.

> God also created the physical laws themselves ("...sustaining all things by his powerful word." Hebrews 1:3a), so everything is ultimately "supernatural".

The word "laws" is best understood as "regular built-in properties." If God created our universe,
its basic physical objects and energies were designed simply enough to give the illusion of some
external "law" making them do what is natural for them to do.

>
> This view is not at odds with science, but celebrates it as the pursuit of understanding a God's creation, and utilising this knowledge to work as secondary creators in the world. This in borne out by the fact that many scientists are Christians. I would say there's a risk of error that goes both ways: for Christians, being too ready to invoke a god-of-the-gaps, and for materialists, disallowing supernatural intervention out of hand.
>
> How about you?

I have come to talk.origins because of my love of science, so I have a natural
tendency to look for natural causes. However, I also acknowledge that the
human mind might not be able to penetrate some mysteries, and OOL could
well be one of them. Without penetration by the human mind, there is no science.

Most t.o. participants don't like that, and so I may come across to them as someone
who secretly hopes for supernatural explanations; but if more of them were candid
about how little we know about OOL, I would be more free to discuss a lot of other things.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

University of So. Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

Well, in practice, Behe's IC, like Muller's, says that each and every
one of the *essential* components is essential. To take an extreme and
silly example, your ability to alter the company's logo on a mousetrap
does not mean the mousetrap is not IC. And even if Muller's argument
does talk about SOME components (actually, to quote him (p. 464), "very
numerous different elementary parts or factors"), his argument does not
change an iota if ALL components are involved.

>>> He called it "interlocking complexity," and showed how it was supporting evolutionary theory. That original paper was, "Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", Hermann J. Muller, Genetics, Vol 3, No 5: 422-499, Sept 1918.

[Martin Harran]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2023 04:20:36 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:

OK, but be warned that this is long :)

As a Catholic, there are obviously some differences between us in the
detail of our religious beliefs, but nothing I think that really
affects what we are discussing here. One point I would perhaps make is
that by accepting an old earth view, you are effectively accepting
that Genesis cannot be taken literally. I do not have an issue with
that, but I think you have to be wary of not taking Genesis literally
yet quoting it to support your case.


It seems to me that the key difference between us is that you think

that "even the simplest life is beyond the reach of natural causes"

and more or less go on to dismiss natural causes completely. I do not
think that natural causes *on their own* are sufficient to explain
life but I see no reason for them not to be the mechanism by which our
bodies came into existence and continue to develop. Essentially (and
this is where I would diverge from many other posters here) I believe
that OOL and evolution are teleological in character. As I have said
before, I am heavily influenced by the ideas of Teilhard De Chardin,
that everything in the universe - inanimate as well as animate - is
gradually unifying towards a final "Omega Point" which he regards as
the fulfilment of Christ drawing everything into himself. [1]


I am a completely convinced dualist who believes that our *soul*,
whilst integrated with our body in this life, has a separate existence
of its own. Again, I am much taken with Teilhard's concept that "We
are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual
beings having a human experience."


Because of my focus on the soul, I don't find it at all helpful how
some Christian believers are so focused on our physical body - the
important thing to me is how it enables our soul to progress on its
journey towards that final destination, not how it biologically ended
up where it is. In my mind, evolution and OOL are just part of the
process that is taking us on our journey to the Omega Point and whilst
they are of great interest, their precise nature is not really all
that important in the overall scheme of things.



I will bring in here the point from the thread about David Deamer's
book as I think it's better to have a single overall discussion rather
than covering common ground in two different threads. In that thread,
I referred back to a review I did of Stephen Meyer's "God Hypothesis"
book where I struggled to get from a God fiddling about with molecules
and DNA to the theistic God, shared by Meyer and myself, with whom we
can have a personal relationship. You offered Special Revelation as a
solution. I don't really grasp that. I totally accept the concept of
Special Revelation but I don't see how that gets us from a God
twiddling with molecules and DNA to a personal relationship with God.


==========================================

[1] If you are not familiar with the ideas of Teilhard De Chardin,
they can be difficult to initially grasp as Teilhard's writing is
almost impenetrable for the average reader. Essentially, his flow of
logic (in my words, not his) is:


- Everything that exists "wants" to join together. This is
demonstrated by how the particles that came into existence at the Big
Bang joined together to form atoms; they in turn joined together to
form molecules, eventually developing into matter in the form of stars
and planets and eventually forming life, at least on our planet.


- As things join together, they create a more complex entity with its
own characteristics. For example, an atom of Oxygen and an atom of
Hydrogen on their own have individual characteristics. When two atoms
of Hydrogen join an atom of Oxygen, we get water, a more complex
material with completely different characteristics from its
constituent atoms. The same applies in many other areas - an engine,
wheels, a metal shell, a braking system and a seat combined together
make a motor car. That motor car is more complex than the individual
parts that have combined together and it has a new characteristic - it
becomes a mode of transport, something that none of the individual
parts could do on their own in their initial state. Teilhard argues
that the same principle applies to organic life; mammals are much more
complex than plants and have far more functionality.


I think those first two parts are probably not particularly
controversial with scientists, but Teilhard goes on to develop his
ideas further in a way that many scientists reject.


- He argues that *awareness* which we see right across the animal
kingdom, is a direct result of that complexity - inanimate objects
like rocks do not have any awareness (though they do contain
*potential* for awareness as that exists in very atom); plants have
limited awareness, responding for example to sunlight and night and
the seasons. Animals have a much higher level of awareness,
particularly humans.


- He then says that from awareness in general, we get to the
recognition of God which is unique to human beings. That is why he
thinks that "Man is not simply a new species of animal (as we are
still too often told). He represents, he initiates, a new species of
life."


- Teilhard sees the next stage of human development as what he terms
the "noosphere", involving more complex social networks leading to
increased human integration and greater human awareness. Like many
people, I see what is happening nowadays with things like the
Internet, social media, AI and globalisation as the fulfilment of what
Teilhard predicted the best part of a hundred years ago.

- Eventually that increased awareness will lead to the Omega Point
discussed above.


As I said above, Teilhard's writing is almost impenetrable for the
average reader. If you are interested in exploring his ideas further,
I thoroughly recommend two books by Louis M. Savary which go through
his ideas in a very understandable way:

"Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man Explained"

Teilhard addressed his "The Phenomenon of Man" to the science
community and he focuses on scientific argument, staying away from
spiritual aspects although Savary does comment on these in his
explanatory book. He first put his ideas together in an essay in the
1930s but largely due to problems between him and Church authorities
[2], his book was only published posthumously in the year of his
death, 1955.

https://www.amazon.com/Teilhard-Chardins-Phenomenon-Man-Explained-ebook/dp/B09GS6499G/ref=sr_1_2


"Teilhard de Chardin - The Divine Milieu Explained: A Spirituality for
the 21st Century"

As indicated in Savary's title, "The Divine Milieu" is a corresponding
book where Teilhard relates his scientific ideas to his religious
beliefs. Teilhard first wrote this book in the 1920s before The
Phenomenon of Man but again it was only published posthumously in
1957, two years after The Phenomenon of Man.

https://www.amazon.com/Teilhard-Chardin-Explained-Spirituality-Century/dp/0809144840/ref=sr_1_3


=================================================

[2] These problems were related to his theological ideas about Adam
and Eve and Original Sin, not his scientific ones though his
scientific knowledge did inform his theological arguments. I gave a
link to an explanation of these issues in a recent post:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0QlFstdyGJM/m/raQyFEjAAAAJ

[RonO]

The really sad thing is that MarkE and likely Tour do not want their god
to be responsible for the origin of life on this planet (#3 of the Top
Six). The Top Six gap denial stupidity just is not Biblical enough for
the majority of IDiotic type creationists. It isn't what we do not have
explanations for at this time that matter because what we do understand
at this time has told most IDiots that they do not want to believe in
the gods that could fill the Top Six gaps. The ID perps really did kill
the ID scam on TO when they put up the Top Six in "their order simply
reflecting that in which they must logically have occurred within our
universe." It is just a fact that in this reality that logical order is
not the Biblical order of creation. Even the old earth creationists at
Reason to Believe can't deal with the Top Six in an honest and
straightforward manner.

Since MarkE can't deal with the god that is responsible for the origin
of life on this planet, and neither can most of the other science denial
creationists, my guess is that as a Christian convert Tour can't deal
with the god that is responsible for the origin of life on this planet
either. The denial is just for denial purposes. Nothing positive is
supposed to come out of the denial except the hope that the denial can
continue.

For the first 3 issues, macromolecules exist in nature, there are no
impossible chemical reactions known. We don't even know what the first
self replicating molecules were made of. What does the denial matter
when creationists like MarkE do not want their god to be responsible for
the origin of life under the conditions that existed 3.8 billion years
ago on this planet?

MarkE would have to deny Tour's Specified Complexity stupidity because
the designer that made those specifications would not be the Biblical
designer. How many Biblical creationists want to confirm god-did-it
specified complexity for the origin of life 3.8 billion years ago? The
Reason to Beileve IDiots acknowledge the origin of life and the
existence of life for billions of years before land plants were created
is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. They claim that life existing
for billions of years before being mentioned as being created is
consistent with their interpretation of the Bible, as something that
just isn't described, but then to keep the order of creation the same
they disregard that argument (just not described) and make stupid claims
like plants were created before sea creatures even though you can see
them using the Cambrian explosion denial that tells them that sea
creatures existed long before land plants. There were no whales among
the Cambrian creatures, but the gaps in the whale fossil record
indicating that whales were created long after land vertebrates existed
have to be denied in order to have whales created before their
terrestrial ancestors, so that they can be among the sea creatures that
were created after land plants, but before land animals. It is just nuts.

Nature is just not Biblical. Science is just the best means that we
have figured out to study nature, and it turned out that the ID perps
never wanted to accomplish any IDiotic science because it would just be
more science to deny. Tour claims that he doesn't know how to do any
IDiotic science as his excuse for not caring about filling the origin of
life gap with his god.

Tour doesn't want to believe in the designer that assembled the first
living cell (his #5) because of what we know of how that life form
changed over the billions of years of the existence of life on earth.
It looks like the first winner lifeforms (the ones that evolved the
existing genetic code) were chemotrophic. Anaerobic photosynthesis
evolved, and after some time was followed by aerobic photosynthesis.
With the production of oxygen some bacteria evolved the oxidative
phosphorylation pathway. The original eukaryotes were anaerobic
chemotrophs, but picked up symbiotic aerobic bacteria, and
photosynthetic bacteria to produce eukaryotic plants and animals. That
life remained microbial until around a billion years ago when
multicellular plants and animals started to evolve. Really, to create
plants and animals, the designer needed to first create aerobic
photosynthetic bacteria, and then bacteria that adapted to the presence
of oxygen to evolve oxidative phosphorylation, and the designer needed
primative eukaryotes that couldn't use oxygen because they likely
evolved before aerobic photosynthesis existed.

The origin of life and subsequent evolution is not Biblical enough for
most anti evolution creationists. Any IDiotic success in filling the
origin of life gap with some god would just be more science to deny.

Ron Okimoto

[Glenn]

They are without exception about as far away from science that one can get. They are only interested in the mostly mindless regurgitation of the same old assumptions and dogmas that have been driven by atheism for the last few hundred years.
Darwinism is a joke. Life is so unimaginably complex, as is the universe, from the largest to the smallest, but they think they can put most of it in a nutshell, with biology for example, "random mutation natural selection" did it".
I suspect that perhaps subconsciously they know what they believe in is bullshit, and that is why they wish to denigrate those who think outside the box. Not all scientists and learned thinkers are that way, but there aren't any here.
Why are you here? You sure don't get any intelligent debates from them. I hear from them "spilling your brains out" in the background. As for you, perhaps you have not considered what used to be, looking for how the Creator did it by looking for "natural" causes. Just be willing to define natural first.

[Ron Dean]

In addition to OOL there is other things in nature example: the fine
tuned universe, including
the location, shape and size of Planet Earth. The only planet in this
solar system with advanced living organisms. There is something else
which I have _never_ found on T.O.. And to only to a
small degree elsewhere. That is the _fact_ that the DNA molecule comes
with its own proof-reading
and multiple repair mechanisms.
https://www.sparknotes.com/biology/molecular/dnareplicationandrepair/section3/
I especially liked the cartoon characters in this YouTube video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP8-5Bhd2ag
>
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/dna-as-the-genetic-material/dna-replication/a/dna-proofreading-and-repair

This repair of DNA was first discovered in the 1930's and again in the
40's, but the tendency was to ignore it because of intellectual biases
and to lesser political expediences. And the fact that the researchers
were confused and did not know what to make of the discovery. But this
was more than a decade before Watson and Crick.
>
In mindless, purposeless, meaningless, blind universe, what exactly,
is the how; the what and why does it matter about mutations in DNA/RNA?
IOW what it that "cares"? In my view this raises a lot of questions.
Exactly how was random mutations detected and repaired? Was the random
mutations discovered by another set of random mutations and natural
selection that devised the protein machines capable of proof-reading and
repair of mutations? Explain step by step exactly how and why this
occurred. I realize that a few mutations escape the detection and repair
machinery and result in genetic diseases that we observe. However, the
modern human species
has been around for 200, 000 years. In that time due to the 2/ND law of
thermodynamics, entropy
increases. This possibly could account for the short-comings we observe
in the present day DNA proof-reading and repair mechanisms.

[jillery]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2023 13:11:47 -0700 (PDT), Lawyer Daggett
<j.nobel...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:40:44?PM UTC-4, Gary Hurd wrote:

Are you complaining about the lack of CRLF's? Or about the multiple
and's? Either way, it's odd that you are so brusque and adamant about
a feature many other posters habitually manifest with nary a peep from
you.

>Meanwhile, it's a dead end point of no use. Random condensation of amino acids is
>of zero consequence to the origins of life. You ought to know and accept this.

I acknowledge it's unlikely interstellar media were a significant
source of biomolecular material. However, the larger and relevant
point is that such material exists at all, which is prima facie proof
of their abiotic manufacture.

>> As for #2, there are again many examples.
>>
>> We see extraterrestrial examples;
>> Oba, Y., Takano, Y., Furukawa, Y. et al. 2022 “Identifying the wide diversity of extraterrestrial purine and pyrimidine nucleobases in carbonaceous meteorites. Nat Commun 13, 2008 (2022).
>>
>> I recall Tour specifically called out Jack Szostak. That can go back decades;
>>
>> David P. Bartel Jack W. Szostak
>> 1993 “Isolation of New Ribozymes from a Large Pool of Random Sequences” Science261,1411-1418(1993).DOI:10.1126/science.7690155
>>
>> Ekland, EH, JW Szostak, and DP Bartel
>> 1995 "Structurally complex and highly active RNA ligases derived from random RNA sequences" Science 21 July 1995: Vol. 269. no. 5222, pp. 364 - 370
>>
>> Szostak, J.W. The eightfold path to non-enzymatic RNA replication. J Syst Chem 3, 2 (2012).
>
>Random polymerization of ribonucleotides may be, and probably is of significance.
>But extra-terrestrial sources of ribonucleotides is just silly. You're not going to get
>enough production of significant polymers from some primordial soup made from
>the rain of micrometeorites. It's nonsense. What's necessary is a flux of activated
>ribonucleosides (potentially ribonucleotide triphosphates but alternatives need to
>be considered). You need the synthetic engine that makes more and more and more,
>akin to a dynamic flow chemical engineering solution.

Again, extra-terrestrial ribonucleotides prove abiotic manufacture,
and disprove one of Tour's items.

>> Item #3, Polysaccharides, is a bit odd to me. What Prof. Tour seems to be digging for is the key saccaride Ribose.
>>
>> This gives you some good background.
>>
>> Springsteen G, Joyce GF.
>> 2004 "Selective derivatization and sequestration of ribose from a prebiotic mix" J Am Chem Soc. 2004 Aug 11;126(31):9578-83
>
>I don't consider polysaccharide synthesis a problem, nor the synthesis of ribose.

But Tour does consider it a problem, which is the important issue
here.

>> Item #4, Specified Information has an interesting history.
>>
>> It starts 50 yers ago with Leslie Orgel in his
>> 1973 book “The Origins of life: Molecules and Natural Selection" New York: John Wiley and Sons.
>>
>> Here was the first use of “specified complexity” as an attribute of life (19n 1973). Orgel was contrasting the specified structure of a crystal which is not alive, and the complexity of a bowl of crude oil which is not alive, with the “specified complexity” of things that are alive. “Irreducible Complexity” was originally proposed by Herman J. Muller in 1918. He called it "interlocking complexity," and showed how it was supporting evolutionary theory. That original paper was, "Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", Hermann J. Muller, Genetics, Vol 3, No 5: 422-499, Sept 1918.
>>
>> ID creationist William Dembski bent this idea. He claimed that the specified complexity of Orgel was godlike in his 2002 book "No Free Lunch. Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence." Lanham" Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
>>
>> He had earlier exposed the Intelligent Design effort as simple creationism in his 1999 article for the Christian magazine Touchstone. Titled, “Signs of Intelligence,” Dembski confirmed the foundation of ID in John 1 when he assured readers that "Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory." (“Signs of Intelligence,” 1999, Touchstone magazine).
>
>The "specified complexity" argument is a gross misunderstanding of information
>science. It's proponents typically abandon it after some time of trying to defend it.
>Dembski has largely abandoned it.

Again, Tour obviously has not abandoned it. Neither has Stephen
Meyer:

https://youtu.be/4VtFKJ5LTS0?t=0

[jillery]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2023 10:40:18 -0700 (PDT), Gary Hurd <gary...@cox.net>
wrote:

Thank you for these references. They help to counter Tour's claims.

[jillery]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2023 14:00:20 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote...

... yet another self-parody. This time he pretends he doesn't
"Revealed Truth" or Monty Python's Black Knight skit. How does
anybody make up stuff like that?

[Burkhard]

Interesting implications for your designer. no? So there are some designers here
who would prefer the DNA they designed to be stable, but they did not quite manage
to engineer it this way. So they build a complex repair mechanism on top of this,
to mitigate their relative failure. But they don't get that one quite right either, and
some harmful mutations still slip through. And all that happens in a universe that they
designed too, including the stuff with mutagenetic properties that they build in.

So I'd say whoever the designer was, you've just proven that it can't be the typical
christian etc monotheistic deity.

[Burkhard]

On Sunday, September 24, 2023 at 3:35:46 AM UTC+2, Ron Dean wrote:

This deserves a bit more context, simply because the story is quite fascinating.
My guess is that whatever source Dean got this from (it sounds a bit like Friedberg?)
alludes here among others to Lotte Auerbach. She was a German biology teacher/
postgraduate researcher who, being jewish, fled from the Nazis in 1933 to Edinburgh.
Because it was difficult for her getting a job at a school, she did a PhD at Edinburgh,
and stayed with my university forever after. She would eventually become
professor at the School for Animal Sciences, and receive the Darwin Award,
the Keith Prize and the Mendel award, in addition to becoming Fellow of the Royal Society.

Her research showed in particular the mutagenic impact of mustard gas, which is where
the politics come in - her work was classified by the military, and the same happened
later to many of the US based scientists who worked on radiation damage to DNA.

Auerbach was eventually able to publish most of her results in 1947, but restrictions like
this, in addition to the typical "academic silos" where radiobiologists would not publish/read
in journals targeted at geneticists meant that while lots of people had glimpses of the ideas
early on, it was difficult for anyone to connect the dots and see the big picture

[RonO]

You still refuse to understand why the other anti-evolution IDiotic
creationists ran from the Top Six. The origin of life is #3 and Fine
tuning is #2. The Cambrian explosion gap denial that you have put up
previously is #5 and the Big Bang is #1.

The simple fact is that most IDiotic type creationists like yourself
never wanted to fill those gaps with their Biblical god. The god that
fills the existing Top Six gaps is not Biblical enough for most Biblical
creationists so they ran from the Top Six and stopped claiming to be IDiots.

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/a2K79skPGXI/m/uDwx0i-_BAAJ

"So here they are, their order simply reflecting that in which they must

logically have occurred within our universe."

Biblical creationists cannot deal with what is known between the gaps,
and that was made clear to most of them when the ID perps presented them

in "their order simply reflecting that in which they must logically have

occurred within our universe". The designer of the Top Six is not the
Biblical designer. Wallowing in the denial will never change that reality.

If you try to use the Top Six in a positive and straightforward manner
you would likely join the ranks of the TO regulars that found that they
could not deal with the Top Six. The Top Six really did kill IDiocy on
TO, and your use of them one at a time is as worthless to you as it had
always been to all the other Biblical creationists.

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

On Sat, 23 Sep 2023 22:18:10 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Thu, 21 Sep 2023 14:00:20 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
><peter2...@gmail.com> wrote...

[correction]

>... yet another self-parody. This time he pretends he doesn't [understand]

>"Revealed Truth" or Monty Python's Black Knight skit. How does
>anybody make up stuff like that?

[Burkhard]

On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+2, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> It's nice to see something from you again, Burkhard. Before I get around to your
> words, I make a comment that segues rather easily into my reply to what you wrote.
> On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 9:20:42 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> > On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 2:35:41 AM UTC+1, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:50:40 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > >
> > > Ah, here I see I am replying to you, MarkE.
> > >
> > > I have a bunch of comments on Bill Rogers's prose, but then I want to remind you
> > > of something I told you about and which you don't seem to have followed through with.
> > > > On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 1:25:39 AM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > On Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 10:55:38 PM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
> > > > > > On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 11:30:38 AM UTC+10, RonO wrote:
>
> > > > > > > > For those who may not know, "Ron Okimoto" is the name given to an early beta release of ChatGPT. It's nostalgic to see it still running here with these bot posts.
> > > > > > > You only wish you had that excuse. Why not tell us how the current
> > > > > > > origin of life gap, that you spent so much time defining, fits into the
> > > > > > > relgious beliefs that you want to support with that god-of-the-gaps
> > > > > > > denial? Tour won't do it. Do you recall the Shermer-Meyer discussion
> > > > > > > where Meyer refused to relate his god-of-the-gaps denial to his
> > > > > > > religious beliefs? Denial for denial purposes, will never amount to
> > > > > > > anything worth lying to yourself about. The sad thing is that all the
> > > > > > > IDiots did it to support their religious beliefs, but what happened when
> > > > > > > they realized that the Top Six wasn't anything that they wanted to
> > > > > > > understand enough to keep lying to themselves about the denial?
>
> > > > > > Could you clarify which alleged denial you're referring to? Are you saying that no ID proponents are willing to make any statement about their personal religious beliefs, and/or any comment on how scientific evidence of the inadequacy of naturalistic OoL relates to their belief in a transcendent creator?
> Positive statements have been made by Michael Behe: a practicing Roman Catholic; he's rather
> a traditionalist, as one might guess from him and his wife having had 8 children. I do believe
> quite a few others are upfront about their personal religious beliefs. As to how they impact
> their attitudes towards naturalistic OOL, I'll have to check to be sure. Behe has actually
> argued in two of his books in favor of common descent, but that only makes sense
> after OOL of life as we know it.
> > > Good luck in getting Ron O to move out of his comfort zone, which a coherent
> > > answer to these questions would entail.
> > >
> > > If he thinks Bill Rogers made a good answer below, then he is deluding himself.
> > > > > Ron uses a lot of words to say something simple. Here's the argument. IDers generate a list of things for which they find the scientific explanations incomplete or inadequate, and then argue that a designer was required to make those things happen. They then stop.
> > > That's Ron O's private opinion. Bill Rogers seems to agree with it, but he is only
> > > deluding himself if he sincerely believes that "IDers" like Behe or
> > > Lennox or Meyer are like this.
>
> > Can you give a single example where Behe goes beyond finding "gaps" in either ToE or OOL research and makes a positive counterproposal with testable characteristics, or at least points to a roadmap that will eventually lead to such theories?

> I'll have to do some checking on that, but I have explained several times in the past
> how directed panspermia (DP) [1] could be tested some time in the future.

But you did not claim that Bill Rogers misrepresent "you", but Behe, Lennox or
Meyer. So to give evidence for this, you'd need any one of these three offers some
positive claims about the designer

> If the evidence for it turns out to be strong, their science could be the
> starting point for the theory of the source of some characteristics of life
> as we know it [2] and their evolution vs. design.
>
> [1] This is the theory that OOL took place on an exoplanet and was sent here by intelligent species
> who evolved there ca. 4 gigayears ago in the form of microorganisms. This is the brainchild
> of world-class biochemists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, and I've been carrying the torch
> for them here in talk.origins since I first read about it in 1996.
>

> Behe wrote briefly about this in DBB, but he didn't show much interest in it.

Well, that should tell you something, shouldn;t it? Even though there are some
obvious candidates for a theory of the designer, Behe, in your own words,
"does not show much interest in it".

Which is of course exactly what Ron, or Bill, have been saying. So it's difficult
to see why you claim above that Bill "is deluding himself about Behe " when right
here, you essentially confirms his claim.

> As to why, I'll have to ask him. The whole ID-OOL connection might have
> gotten a lot farther than my summary above, had he shown more interest.
>
> [2] "The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> combine all the desirable properties within one single type
> of organism or to send many different organisms is not
> completely clear."
> --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> Simon and Schuster, 1981, p. 137

> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

> Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> > > If he doesn't believe it, he is knowingly knocking
> > > down a straw man below.
>
> > > > A normal scientist (or a normal person looking for an explanation) would notice that whenever they say "A designer is required" to explain why the physical constants have the values they do, or how life got started, or how major taxonomic groups evolved, or how individual species originate, they are constraining what sort of designer they are talking about - it must have certain capabilities, must have been active in certain times and places, etc.,
> > > The only grain of truth here is that all IDers talk about "designer" in the singular,
> > > at least in the writings that I have seen. For the things Bill lists, distinct designers
> > > are called for, and I have consistently talked about them in the plural.
> > >
> > > And in the latter two cases, no intelligence beyond our own is required for designers,
> > > only a slightly more advanced technology -- but one that researchers of the future might
> > > be capable of within a few centuries.
> > >
> > > As to times and places, that is already deducible in many cases from fossil evidence.
> > > > and yet they never seem to try to put together a model of what the designer is like based on all the evidence they have from their "explanatory gaps," and they certainly do not make explicit attempts to show how such a designer is compatible with whatever version of God they personally think the designer actually is.
> > > Here Bill Rogers has swallowed Ron O's spiel hook, line and sinker. I sometimes
> > > wonder how much independent thinking he is capable of. My impression
> > > is that he is a narrow specialist on malaria and hasn't had an original idea
> > > about anything that it is worthwhile to have an original idea about.
> > > > Okay. Ron, I sympathise to some extent.
> > > Um...you do realize that Ron O didn't reply to you until after you posted this, don't you?
> > >
> > > If you are ignoring Bill because you realize he has nothing to contribute to these side issues,
> > > I congratulate you.
>
> > > > It can seem like ID sits on a hill taking potshots all day but never offering anything constructive.
>
> > > I am an exception. Especially where the origin of life ON EARTH is concerned, I
> > > have posted at great length about the possibility of directed panspermia,
> > > and a little about undirected panspermia [as in Arrhenius/Hoyle/Wickramasinghe].
>
> > > > And among YECs, OECs, IDists, Progressive Creationists, Theistic Evolutionists, etc, there are clearly a wide range of often mutually contradictory beliefs and attempts to reconcile science and theology.
>
> > > I've taken a temporary vacation from that kind of talk, confining myself to what scientists
> > > know and do not know about OOL on the thread,
> > >
> > > "The Alchemy and Biochemistry of OOL"
> > > https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/uX-9hX7ZvHI
> > >
> > > I told you about this thread shortly before I began it,
> > > but I haven't seen any sign that you've looked at it.
> > >
> > > On Friday, I talked about other "Holy Grails", something you
> > > showed some curiosity about:
> > >
> > > https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/uX-9hX7ZvHI/m/kD7NIzCEBQAJ
> > > Re: The Alchemy and Biochemistry of OOL
> > > Sep 15, 2023, 4:10:37 PM
> > > > I myself read the scientific evidence as strongly favouring an old earth, but as you've seen I'm highly skeptical of the naturalistic origin of life, and also macro evolution. Do I have a coherently integrated set of theological and scientific beliefs? Far from it. Not what I'd prefer, but I learn to live with it.
>
> > > Perhaps you, too, would do well to learn some basics of biochemistry before
> > > going on to express your skepticism.
> > > > >
> > > > > But as you said in response to Burkhard, ID is in a different category from science; it is not about details, evidence, or explanation, and cannot be judged by those standards.
>
> > > Here is why I suggest you take the right kind of "vacation." There was no need
> > > for you to make such admissions to Burkhard, and if you knew more about
> > > the "Holy Grails," you would not even be tempted to make them.
> > >
> > >
> > > Peter Nyikos
> > > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > > Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
> > > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Ron Dean]

What I don't understand is your utterly insane obsession with the "Top Six"!
You don't believe in anything, you have no life apart from TO.
>
What I know of the Top Six, I accept the as fair representative of ID.

>
> The simple fact is that most IDiotic type creationists like yourself
> never wanted to fill those gaps with their Biblical god.
>

Intelligent design is strictly about evidence pointing to design. One
may believe that the Bibical God is the designer. But that's exactly
what it is; it's a belief, but not of evidence. Do you know the
difference between of belief and of evidence? You show no indication
that you do!

The god that
> fills the existing Top Six gaps is not Biblical enough for most Biblical
> creationists so they ran from the Top Six and stopped claiming to be
> IDiots.
>
> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/a2K79skPGXI/m/uDwx0i-_BAAJ
>
> "So here they are, their order simply reflecting that in which they must
> logically have occurred within our universe."
>
> Biblical creationists cannot deal with what is known between the gaps,
> and that was made clear to most of them when the ID perps presented them
> in "their order simply reflecting that in which they must logically have
> occurred within our universe".  The designer of the Top Six is not the
> Biblical designer.  Wallowing in the denial will never change that reality.
>

Okay, no problem with that fact! ID is strictly about design, not about
any specific designer.
It occurs to me, that the gaps is where we find evolution, trying to
fill the gaps between species
with intermediate or transitional fossils.

>
> If you try to use the Top Six in a positive and straightforward manner
> you would likely join the ranks of the TO regulars that found that they
> could not deal with the Top Six.  The Top Six really did kill IDiocy on
> TO, and your use of them one at a time is as worthless to you as it had
> always been to all the other Biblical creationists.
>

Biblical creationist!?? There is nothing in Intelligent Design taken
from your Bible. Nor is your Bible ever used as evidence to support ID.
So you should stop with your idiotic unsupported accusations charges and
assertions as they do not apply to intelligent design.

[broger...@gmail.com]

Ron's tone and prolixity may obscure his argument. The point is this. Every time you, or any ID supporter, lists something or things that you think science has no adequate explanation for, and which you attribute to the designer, you are putting constraints on the characteristics of the designer, what his abilities are, where and when he was active. Once you get to six or more widely different things which you think the designer is responsible for, then you have a large number of things you know about the designer. So, just from the things you've mentioned as evidence for the designer, you know that he is capable of altering the values of the physical constants of the universe and did so on the order of 13 billion years ago (fine tuning); you know that he is capable of pushing molecules around to avoid the overwhelming improbability of the origin of life and that he was active on earth on the order of 4 billion years ago (OoL); you know that he was capable of designing genes for the bacterial flagellum and inserting them into the ancestors of current prokaryotes on earth, 3-4 billions years ago (Id's favorite irreducibly complex protein assembly); you know that he was capable of altering the genomes of pre-Cambrian animals to produce the ancestors of multiple modern phyla, on earth about 0.5 billion years ago (Cambrian explosion); you know that he was responsible for the original hox genes on earth, maybe 1 billion years ago (your favorite evo-devo gene evidence of a designer); you know that he has been active millions of times on earth over the last few 100 million years at many different places on earth creating new species (lack of transitional fossils). The list could go on.

Now, you always say that ID tells you nothing about the identity of the designer, but the facts about the designer that are implied by all the "evidence of design" you talk about, tells you lots about what the designer (or designers) must be like. Ron's point is that neither you, nor other ID backers, seem interested in using all the information about the designer's characteristics that must be true if the Top Six, or other bits of evidence of design are true, to create a model of what the designer is like. That is what actual scientists would do if they had all that information pointing to a designer; they'd use the evidence, Top Six or whatever, to make a model of the designer, and then try to refine the model. The fact that they consistently refuse to do that, tells you they are not doing science, but instead are trying to slip religion into schools wrapped in a lot of scientific terminology.

Ron is long-winded and unnecessarily insulting, but his argument is good.

[RonO]

What you should understand is why you still use the Top Six denial
without wanting to understand how stupid and degenerate of a thing it is
to do. You have admitted that you do not want to understand how the Top
Six fit into your religious beliefs, and what does that tell you about
what you are doing?

Why try to lie about someone else? What lies do you have to keep
telling yourself to keep using the Top Six? You know that you are using
the junk to support your religious beliefs, so why keep doing it if you
don't want to believe in the designer that is responsible for your gap
denial? The other IDiots couldn't do it any longer. Kalk and Bill
never told you why they quit the ID scam when the Top Six came out, but
you should understand why. It is the same reason why you don't want to
understand how your religious beliefs fit into the gaps that you are using.

>
>>
>> The simple fact is that most IDiotic type creationists like yourself
>> never wanted to fill those gaps with their Biblical god.
> >
> Intelligent design is strictly about evidence pointing to design. One
> may believe that the Bibical God is the designer. But that's exactly
> what it is; it's a belief, but not of evidence. Do you know the
> difference between of belief and of evidence? You show no indication
> that you do!

How does lying about what the ID scam has been for decades do anything
for you? The ID perps have only claimed to be doing the ID science, but
they have never done any. The last thing that they want to do is
accomplish any ID science. The majority of their support still comes
from the YEC because they have lied to the YEC rubes about the "Big
Tent" that ID is. Just imagine if Meyer ever demonstrated that some
designer was responsible for the Cambrian explosion and the
diversification of bilateral animals during a 25 million year time
period over half a billion years ago? Meyer has consistently made a big
deal about how the span of time has decreased from 45 million years when
the Scientific creationists used to use the Cambrian explosion denial to
the current 25 million year time period. What if any of them determine
that some designer is responsible for the origin of life over 3 billion
years ago. It is just a fact that the ID perps never wanted to
accomplish any ID science because it would just be more science for the
Biblical creationists to deny.

There is no longer any reason for any Biblical creationist to continue
to lie about the ID scam when the ID perps have been stupid enough to
deliver the Top Six in "their order simply reflecting that in which they
must logically have occurred within our universe. The Big Bang happened
over 13 billion years ago. The fine tuning of our solar system occurred
4.5 billion years ago. It took over 8 billion years of dying stars to
produce the elements that make up our solar system. The Origin of life
occurred around 3.8 billion years ago on an earth much different than it
is today. The flagellum was designed over a billion years ago, and the
Cambrian explosion of sea creatures occurred over half a billion years
ago long before there were land plants on this earth, and the
angiosperms described in the Bible were designed long after there were
land animals. The ID perps never wanted to fill the gaps in the human
fossil record for the last 10 million years because for most of the
creationist rubes that supported the ID scam there was no millions of
years ago to fill with anything.

>
>  The god that
>> fills the existing Top Six gaps is not Biblical enough for most
>> Biblical creationists so they ran from the Top Six and stopped
>> claiming to be IDiots.
>>
>> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/a2K79skPGXI/m/uDwx0i-_BAAJ
>>
>> "So here they are, their order simply reflecting that in which they
>> must logically have occurred within our universe."
>>
>> Biblical creationists cannot deal with what is known between the gaps,
>> and that was made clear to most of them when the ID perps presented
>> them in "their order simply reflecting that in which they must
>> logically have occurred within our universe".  The designer of the Top
>> Six is not the Biblical designer.  Wallowing in the denial will never
>> change that reality.
>>
> Okay, no problem with that fact! ID is strictly about design, not about
> any specific designer.
> It occurs to me, that the gaps is where we find evolution, trying to
> fill the gaps between species
> with intermediate or transitional fossils.

Biblical creationists never want to fill the fossil gaps with a
designer. Just take the whale fossil gap junk that Sternberg has been
cooking up for the ID scam since 2007. The Reason to Believe old earth
creationists never want those fossil gaps filled because they need
whales to be among the sea creatures created before land animals. Why
don't you demonstrate that there are any fossil gaps that YEC
creationists, who are the major support base for the ID scam, want
filled with a designer. Just do that simple exercise. Start with #5 of
the Top Six (the Cambrian explosion).

ID is only about the denial, why would you want to continue to lie to
yourself. ID perps like Behe and Denton have told IDiots for decades
that biological evolution is a fact of nature. They have also warned
IDiots that you can't expect much to change because they understood that
it was what was between the gaps that creationists had to worry about.
Filling the Top Six gaps with ID science was never an option. It would
just be more science for Biblical creationists like yourself to deny.

Ron Okimoto

[MarkE]

Thanks for the extended response.

>
> As a Catholic, there are obviously some differences between us in the
> detail of our religious beliefs, but nothing I think that really
> affects what we are discussing here. One point I would perhaps make is
> that by accepting an old earth view, you are effectively accepting
> that Genesis cannot be taken literally. I do not have an issue with
> that, but I think you have to be wary of not taking Genesis literally
> yet quoting it to support your case.

Yes, the one thing that matters is, who is Christ to you?

>
>
> It seems to me that the key difference between us is that you think
> that "even the simplest life is beyond the reach of natural causes"
> and more or less go on to dismiss natural causes completely. I do not
> think that natural causes *on their own* are sufficient to explain
> life but I see no reason for them not to be the mechanism by which our
> bodies came into existence and continue to develop. Essentially (and
> this is where I would diverge from many other posters here) I believe
> that OOL and evolution are teleological in character. As I have said
> before, I am heavily influenced by the ideas of Teilhard De Chardin,
> that everything in the universe - inanimate as well as animate - is
> gradually unifying towards a final "Omega Point" which he regards as
> the fulfilment of Christ drawing everything into himself. [1]

Would this have the appearance of theistic evolution, but is instead a teleological drive embedded in matter itself? Or perhaps one type of theistic evolution?

>
> I am a completely convinced dualist who believes that our *soul*,
> whilst integrated with our body in this life, has a separate existence
> of its own. Again, I am much taken with Teilhard's concept that "We
> are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual
> beings having a human experience."
>
>
> Because of my focus on the soul, I don't find it at all helpful how
> some Christian believers are so focused on our physical body - the
> important thing to me is how it enables our soul to progress on its
> journey towards that final destination, not how it biologically ended
> up where it is. In my mind, evolution and OOL are just part of the
> process that is taking us on our journey to the Omega Point and whilst
> they are of great interest, their precise nature is not really all
> that important in the overall scheme of things.
>
>
>
> I will bring in here the point from the thread about David Deamer's
> book as I think it's better to have a single overall discussion rather
> than covering common ground in two different threads. In that thread,
> I referred back to a review I did of Stephen Meyer's "God Hypothesis"
> book where I struggled to get from a God fiddling about with molecules
> and DNA to the theistic God, shared by Meyer and myself, with whom we
> can have a personal relationship. You offered Special Revelation as a
> solution. I don't really grasp that. I totally accept the concept of
> Special Revelation but I don't see how that gets us from a God
> twiddling with molecules and DNA to a personal relationship with God.

Are you saying you're okay with special revelation giving us a God with whom we can have a personal relationship, but not sure how that leads to special creation as opposed to theistic evolution or de Chardin's Omega Point teleology? Yes...favouring one of these on the basis of special revelation (i.e. the Bible) seems to be a matter of interpretation - which is why it's possible to be a YEC, OEC or TE and otherwise doctrinally mainstream.

Thanks for the references. I've only come across de Chardin in passing; I'm now curious.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, September 24, 2023 at 11:10:47 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+2, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > It's nice to see something from you again, Burkhard. Before I get around to your
> > words, I make a comment that segues rather easily into my reply to what you wrote.

And this time, I comment on an earlier Ron O spiel, since it is relevant to a comment
you made in the post to which I am replying.

But then I quickly get around to the beginning of your latest comments, Burkhard.

> > On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 9:20:42 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> > > On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 2:35:41 AM UTC+1, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:50:40 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Ah, here I see I am replying to you, MarkE.
> > > >
> > > > I have a bunch of comments on Bill Rogers's prose, but then I want to remind you
> > > > of something I told you about and which you don't seem to have followed through with.
> > > > > On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 1:25:39 AM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > On Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 10:55:38 PM UTC-4, Mark wrote:
> > > > > > > On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 11:30:38 AM UTC+10, RonO wrote:

[MarkE wrote:]

> > > > > > > > > For those who may not know, "Ron Okimoto" is the name given to an early beta release of ChatGPT. It's nostalgic to see it still running here with these bot posts.

The following, in *direct* reply to MarkE's comment, was a good example of something that looks like
it was cooked up by an AI program that had been fed completely speculative "information":

> > > > > > > > You only wish you had that excuse. Why not tell us how the current
> > > > > > > > origin of life gap, that you spent so much time defining, fits into the
> > > > > > > > relgious beliefs that you want to support with that god-of-the-gaps
> > > > > > > > denial? Tour won't do it. Do you recall the Shermer-Meyer discussion
> > > > > > > > where Meyer refused to relate his god-of-the-gaps denial to his
> > > > > > > > religious beliefs? Denial for denial purposes, will never amount to
> > > > > > > > anything worth lying to yourself about. The sad thing is that all the
> > > > > > > > IDiots did it to support their religious beliefs, but what happened when
> > > > > > > > they realized that the Top Six wasn't anything that they wanted to
> > > > > > > > understand enough to keep lying to themselves about the denial?

What happened when they realized a nonexistent event? That's my take on
this "denial"-saturated bot-like screed, since the things I've read from MarkE
and especially Ron Dean seem to run counter to this event having taken place in their minds.

> > > > > > > Could you clarify which alleged denial you're referring to? Are you saying that no ID proponents are willing to make any statement about their personal religious beliefs, and/or any comment on how scientific evidence of the inadequacy of naturalistic OoL relates to their belief in a transcendent creator?

[myself, Peter, last time around:]

> > Positive statements have been made by Michael Behe: a practicing Roman Catholic; he's rather
> > a traditionalist, as one might guess from him and his wife having had 8 children. I do believe
> > quite a few others are upfront about their personal religious beliefs. As to how they impact
> > their attitudes towards naturalistic OOL, I'll have to check to be sure. Behe has actually
> > argued in two of his books in favor of common descent, but that only makes sense
> > after OOL of life as we know it.

[myself, earlier:]

> > > > Good luck in getting Ron O to move out of his comfort zone, which a coherent
> > > > answer to these questions would entail.
> > > >
> > > > If he thinks Bill Rogers made a good answer below, then he is deluding himself.

> > > > > > Ron uses a lot of words to say something simple. Here's the argument. IDers generate a list of things for which they find the scientific explanations incomplete or inadequate, and then argue that a designer was required to make those things happen. They then stop.

I think you misunderstood what I wrote next, Burkhard: my main emphasis was on Bill's word "required".

> > > > That's Ron O's private opinion. Bill Rogers seems to agree with it, but he is only
> > > > deluding himself if he sincerely believes that "IDers" like Behe or
> > > > Lennox or Meyer are like this.
> >
> > > Can you give a single example where Behe goes beyond finding "gaps" in either ToE or OOL research and makes a positive counterproposal with testable characteristics, or at least points to a roadmap that will eventually lead to such theories?

> > I'll have to do some checking on that, but I have explained several times in the past
> > how directed panspermia (DP) [1] could be tested some time in the future.

> But you did not claim that Bill Rogers misrepresent "you", but Behe, Lennox or
> Meyer. So to give evidence for this, you'd need any one of these three offers some
> positive claims about the designer

No, what is really required is for Bill Rogers to give an example where any of the
three mentioned stuck his neck out in a serious discussion to the point where they claimed that
a designer was *required* for this or that feature. Their usual contention was laid out
already by MarkE very early in another thread, where he introduced talk.origins to Tour's challenge:

"It's important to recognise the fundamental contention here: Does science provide greater evidence for naturalistic origin of life or for transcendent intelligent agency?"
--https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/yl0TJZ0nueg/m/I5TS-pGVAAAJ
Re: Origin of life challenge
Aug 25, 2023, 8:10:15 PM UTC-4

Note, not "required," just "greater evidence". As someone well versed in law,
you have a good grasp of the distinction between "proof beyond a reasonable doubt"
and "preponderance of evidence." [Historical example: OJ Simpson was declared
not guilty of murder in a criminal trial, but guilty of "wrongful death" in a civil lawsuit.]

> > If the evidence for it turns out to be strong, their science could be the
> > starting point for the theory of the source of some characteristics of life
> > as we know it [2] and their evolution vs. design.
> >
> > [1] This is the theory that OOL took place on an exoplanet and was sent here by intelligent species
> > who evolved there ca. 4 gigayears ago in the form of microorganisms. This is the brainchild
> > of world-class biochemists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, and I've been carrying the torch
> > for them here in talk.origins since I first read about it in 1996.
> >
> > Behe wrote briefly about this in DBB, but he didn't show much interest in it.

> Well, that should tell you something, shouldn;t it? Even though there are some
> obvious candidates for a theory of the designer, Behe, in your own words,
> "does not show much interest in it".

I've commented earlier on how "the designer" is a poor choice of words,
except in very specific cases, and "the designers" is better, especially
in the case of DP.

In the two posts immediately after yours on this thread, Ron Dean seemed
to be very aware of this distinction, but Bill Rogers ignored this all through his
long first paragraph in his reply to Ron, and only acknowledged the possibility
of various designers for various events later, in passing

> Which is of course exactly what Ron, or Bill, have been saying.

Not Ron O. He seems to be interested in Glenn, Ron Dean, and MarkE on this thread,
and to imply that they secretly *do* show much interest in designers,
but do not want to admit what Ron O reads their minds as believing.

> So it's difficult
> to see why you claim above that Bill "is deluding himself about Behe " when right
> here, you essentially confirms his claim.

Like I said, you misunderstood the point of my comment.

>
> > As to why, I'll have to ask him. The whole ID-OOL connection might have
> > gotten a lot farther than my summary above, had he shown more interest.

I haven't asked Behe yet -- I've been so busy lately that I did only one post
to Usenet in all of the second full week of September.

> >
> > [2] "The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> > microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> > conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> > combine all the desirable properties within one single type
> > of organism or to send many different organisms is not
> > completely clear."
> > --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> > Simon and Schuster, 1981, p. 137

Remainder deleted; you had no comment to make on it in either of your replies.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

Univ. of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Actually, some of them know a lot of scientific facts; but there is a vast gulf between
mere knowledge and a deep understanding.

> They are only interested in the mostly mindless regurgitation of the same old assumptions and dogmas that have been driven by atheism for the last few hundred years.

True of most of them. Yet, as I have noted on other threads, all but two of the regurgitators-- jillery and Harshman -- are
tight-lipped about what they believe. For instance, Harran's Teilhard de Chardin fan club membership is not a true
gauge of his actual beliefs.

> Darwinism is a joke. Life is so unimaginably complex, as is the universe, from the largest to the smallest, but they think they can put most of it in a nutshell, with biology for example, "random mutation natural selection" did it".

Yeah, jillery's trolling about echolocation only serves to emphasize the stupendous difference
between human echolocation and the SONAR of some bats to alert, objective readers.
How do any of them imagine the PROCESS by which mutation and natural selection
produced bat sonar?

Short answer: they don't. They take it on blind faith.

> I suspect that perhaps subconsciously they know what they believe in is bullshit,

In the case of bat evolution, they may know it, which is one reason why they are quick
to steer the subject away from bats, like jillery and Mark Isaak did.

Even such atheistic heavyweights as Daniel Dennett are at a loss there.
He let the amateur philosopher Doug Hofstadter make a fool of himself by not comprehending
Nagel's essay "What is it like to be a bat?" Nagel underestimated the stupidity
of even Pulitzer Prize winners like Doug, otherwise he would have spelled it out:

"Are bats conscious? and if they are, what is their conscious experience of sonar like:
human consciousness of sight, human consciousness of sounds,
or some sense that we humans can't begin to imagine?"

Once you ask yourself THAT question, you begin to realize how little the
"random mutation plus natural selection" mantra can explain the world around us.

> and that is why they wish to denigrate those who think outside the box. Not all scientists and learned thinkers are that way, but there aren't any here.

Hey, *I* am a learned thinker. I can even call myself a scientist in the eyes
of those who think mathematics is not a science: I've done some empirical
research and also a bit of sophisticated theory in applied mathematics.

> Why are you here? You sure don't get any intelligent debates from them.

They are like the grains of sand that cause oysters to produce pearls. I've
formulated a huge range of ideas from having to debate difficult subjects with them.

Even jillery's trolling about echolocation caused me to learn a lot about the
human variety. One thing I learned was that I was as good as any at it
back in my childhood. I'd make a game of walking up to walls with my
eyes shut and have a feeling as though there were something affecting
the skin of my face. It's an example of what is known in psychology as "synesthesia".

> I hear from them "spilling your brains out" in the background. As for you, perhaps you have not considered what used to be, looking for how the Creator did it by looking for "natural" causes. Just be willing to define natural first.

No problemo. It's the sort of thing that comes natural to me,
having experienced what they call "the dark night of the soul"
for decades on end. Would you like details?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

Univ. of So. Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Martin Harran]

On Mon, 25 Sep 2023 19:14:16 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>For instance, Harran's Teilhard de Chardin fan club membership is not a true
>gauge of his actual beliefs.

This from the person who previously stated that:

"It is a sign of psychosis when someone confuses his private opinions
about people with reality, without having produced an iota of evidence
for his opinions."

A pretty good example of self-diagnosis.

[...]

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 4:20:49 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Sep 2023 19:14:16 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
> >For instance, Harran's Teilhard de Chardin fan club membership is not a true
> >gauge of his actual beliefs.

I was speaking figuratively. There is no formal membership in the "fan club"
of people who have been fans of Teilhard since shortly after his death.
One of them gave an invited talk at my tiny (< 1000) liberal arts college
when I was a student there. That was over 60 years ago.

> This from the person who previously stated that:
>
> "It is a sign of psychosis when someone confuses his private opinions
> about people with reality, without having produced an iota of evidence
> for his opinions."

This statement was ripped out of context, where your indirect beneficiary,
Ron O, admonished someone to start living in reality.

As usual, you had nothing negative to say about that.

> A pretty good example of self-diagnosis.
>
> [...]

Your illogical argument speaks for its illogicality.

Who do you think you are fooling?


Peter Nyikos

[Martin Harran]

On Tue, 26 Sep 2023 06:19:31 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 4:20:49?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
>> On Mon, 25 Sep 2023 19:14:16 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>> >For instance, Harran's Teilhard de Chardin fan club membership is not a true
>> >gauge of his actual beliefs.
>
>I was speaking figuratively. There is no formal membership in the "fan club"
>of people who have been fans of Teilhard since shortly after his death.

You made an assertion about my "actual beliefs" without an iota of
evidence to support it. Exactly what you defined elsewhere as a sign
of psychosis.

>One of them gave an invited talk at my tiny (< 1000) liberal arts college
>when I was a student there. That was over 60 years ago.


>
>> This from the person who previously stated that:
>>
>> "It is a sign of psychosis when someone confuses his private opinions
>> about people with reality, without having produced an iota of evidence
>> for his opinions."
>
>This statement was ripped out of context, where your indirect beneficiary,
>Ron O, admonished someone to start living in reality.
>
>As usual, you had nothing negative to say about that.
>
>> A pretty good example of self-diagnosis.
>>
>> [...]
>
>Your illogical argument speaks for its illogicality.
>
>Who do you think you are fooling?

The only person *you* are fooliong is yourself.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

You haven't answered any of MarkE's questions in his reply to this post of yours.

It's obvious that your priorities lie elsewhere.

I am skipping over the part of your post on which he had questions.

On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 8:15:46 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:

That part ended at the following line:

> ==========================================
>
> [1] If you are not familiar with the ideas of Teilhard De Chardin,
> they can be difficult to initially grasp as Teilhard's writing is
> almost impenetrable for the average reader. Essentially, his flow of
> logic (in my words, not his) is:

> - Everything that exists "wants" to join together.

I'm very curious to know where Teilhard made such a naive and unscientific
comment. It bespeaks a woeful ignorance about astrophysics.

>This is
> demonstrated by how the particles that came into existence at the Big
> Bang joined together to form atoms; they in turn joined together to
> form molecules, eventually developing into matter in the form of stars
> and planets and eventually forming life, at least on our planet.

The opposite is "demonstrated" by the following facts:

(1) The "wanting of atoms and molecules to come together" on earth
basically ended about 4 gigayears ago. If it had proceeded to where earth
would be about twice the diameter it is now, earth would be, like Venus,
inhospitable to life.

(2) The moon formed quite close to the earth, and has been moving *away*
from it ever since due to tidal forces. If it had kept coming closer, it would
either crashed into the earth or raised such stupendous tides as to make
evolution to our species essentially impossible.

(3) "The exception that proves the rule (1)": About 65 million years ago,
a ca. ten mile wide asteroid hit earth and raised an immense cloud of dust
that caused the food chains to collapse to where no animal weighing
more than 50 kilos is known to have survived. Had that asteroid been
ten times the diameter [I know of at least six asteroids that are larger than *that*],
all but the hardiest prokaryotes would have perished, setting evolution
on earth back a few gigayears.

And that would have put *finis* to evolution to our level of intelligence.
The sun keeps growing hotter, and it is estimated that it will be too hot
for life as we know it by the time one more
gigayear has passed.

And that's just looking at the possible fates for our little planet.
I could name a lot more flaws by looking further out, at least as serious.


Got to go now. Duty calls. I'll leave you with this thought:
have you ever wondered why stars are typically so FAR apart?


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[erik simpson]

Minor quibble: the sun is not growing hotter, and in fact will grow cooler as
it continues to evolve. The earth will get hotter because the lumionosity of
the sun will increase enormously.

[jillery]

On Mon, 25 Sep 2023 19:14:16 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Yeah, jillery's trolling about echolocation

'Tis Glenn's troll, not mine. You would know this if you had any idea
what you're talking about. That makes you just another trolling liar,
JTEM's parrot.

[Martin Harran]

On Mon, 25 Sep 2023 05:09:10 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:

I believe Him to be the personification of the God from whom we came
and to whom we will return provided we follow the message He has given
us through Christ. To me, the important message of Genesis is mankind
becoming aware of God and the recognition of good and evil with our
ability to choose between them. I think this was an early stage in
preparing us for the coming of Christ and our eventual reunification
with God.

>
>>
>>
>> It seems to me that the key difference between us is that you think
>> that "even the simplest life is beyond the reach of natural causes"
>> and more or less go on to dismiss natural causes completely. I do not
>> think that natural causes *on their own* are sufficient to explain
>> life but I see no reason for them not to be the mechanism by which our
>> bodies came into existence and continue to develop. Essentially (and
>> this is where I would diverge from many other posters here) I believe
>> that OOL and evolution are teleological in character. As I have said
>> before, I am heavily influenced by the ideas of Teilhard De Chardin,
>> that everything in the universe - inanimate as well as animate - is
>> gradually unifying towards a final "Omega Point" which he regards as
>> the fulfilment of Christ drawing everything into himself. [1]
>
>Would this have the appearance of theistic evolution, but is instead a teleological drive embedded in matter itself? Or perhaps one type of theistic evolution?

Not sure what you mean by "the appearance of theistic evolution" but I
guess it is one type of theistic evolution. I'm also not sure about a
teleological drive embedded in matter itself, I'm more inclined to
think of it as external to but expressed through matter but I'm
open-minded about this. For example, I'm intrigued (though not
entirely convinced) by writers such as Phillip Goff who promotes
panpsychism, the idea that all matter contains consciousness.

https://philipgoffphilosophy.com/popular-articles

I'm more inclined to think of the teleological drive as an external
force acting in a similar way to gravity acting on a river, causing it
to ever flow downwards towards the sea. Gravity does not determine the
course of the river, the water simply responds to the terrain that it
meets; it will meander wide and slowly through soft earth but flow
narrow and fast through a rocky canyon - it responds directly to the
environment that it encounters. I think it is the same with biological
life which may appear to evolve in a random way but it's not random;
it is life driven towards the Omega Point and just responding to the
environment it meets on the way, no need for a designer planning its
course.

>
>>
>> I am a completely convinced dualist who believes that our *soul*,
>> whilst integrated with our body in this life, has a separate existence
>> of its own. Again, I am much taken with Teilhard's concept that "We
>> are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual
>> beings having a human experience."
>>
>>
>> Because of my focus on the soul, I don't find it at all helpful how
>> some Christian believers are so focused on our physical body - the
>> important thing to me is how it enables our soul to progress on its
>> journey towards that final destination, not how it biologically ended
>> up where it is. In my mind, evolution and OOL are just part of the
>> process that is taking us on our journey to the Omega Point and whilst
>> they are of great interest, their precise nature is not really all
>> that important in the overall scheme of things.
>>
>>
>>
>> I will bring in here the point from the thread about David Deamer's
>> book as I think it's better to have a single overall discussion rather
>> than covering common ground in two different threads. In that thread,
>> I referred back to a review I did of Stephen Meyer's "God Hypothesis"
>> book where I struggled to get from a God fiddling about with molecules
>> and DNA to the theistic God, shared by Meyer and myself, with whom we
>> can have a personal relationship. You offered Special Revelation as a
>> solution. I don't really grasp that. I totally accept the concept of
>> Special Revelation but I don't see how that gets us from a God
>> twiddling with molecules and DNA to a personal relationship with God.
>
>Are you saying you're okay with special revelation giving us a God with whom we can have a personal relationship, but not sure how that leads to special creation as opposed to theistic evolution or de Chardin's Omega Point teleology? Yes...favouring one of these on the basis of special revelation (i.e. the Bible) seems to be a matter of interpretation - which is why it's possible to be a YEC, OEC or TE and otherwise doctrinally mainstream.

The problem with Revelation is knowing whether or not it's genuine. If
some stranger came to you tomorrow and told you that God had told him
the Sun is going to explode next Tuesday and the explosion will
consume all bad people but good people will rise through the explosion
to heaven, I doubt if you would take him too seriously. We really need
something beyond the person claiming Revelation to convince us that
what they are claiming is genuinely from God, we need at the very
least a detailed explanation of what they are claiming, not just some
simple message. That is why people here keep asking you to give them
some evidential argument for an intelligent designer, not a simple
claim that it's too complicated to have happened naturally. It is also
why I am so hung up on the question of how we get from a designer
twiddling about with molecules and DNA to that personal God.


>
>>
>>
>> ========

[Martin Harran]

On Tue, 26 Sep 2023 11:21:52 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

I refer you to the second half of my post of Jul 13, the bit that
begins "I have explained to you ad nauseam why treat you as I do and
don't try to have a rational discussion with you"

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/NIB_EKCCffU/m/0vSy5dFEBAAJ

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 9/22/23 2:34 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 4:15:44 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> >> On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:40:44 PM UTC-4, Gary Hurd wrote:
> >
> > Finally, someone (Gary Hurd) actually looks in detail at the challenge.
> > Below, his commentary comes in for some criticism from both Lawyer Daggett and myself.
> >
> > But then, talk.origins is a good medium for thrashing out differences of opinion,
> > as long as it is done in good faith. So let the chips fall where they may.

> >
> >
> >>> James Tour’s latest bullshit claimed there are 5 "impossible" problems;
> >>>
> >>> 1. Polypeptides
> >>> 2. Polynucleotides
> >>> 3. Polysaccharides
> >>> 4. Specified Information
> >>> 5. Assembly of a Living Cell
> >

> > These were the *topics* of the different problems. Tour had specific challenges
> > pertaining to each one.

In particular, for 4., he was interested in specified complexity.


<big skip for focus>

> >>> Item #4, Specified Information has an interesting history.
> >>>
> >>> It starts 50 yers ago with Leslie Orgel in his
> >>> 1973 book “The Origins of life: Molecules and Natural Selection" New York: John Wiley and Sons.
> >>>
> >>> Here was the first use of “specified complexity” as an attribute of life (19n 1973). Orgel was contrasting the specified structure of a crystal which is not alive, and the complexity of a bowl of crude oil which is not alive, with the “specified complexity” of things that are alive.

I wonder whether anyone has ever given a synopsis of Orgel's writings on "specified complexity" here in talk.origins.
Orgel was a world-class biochemist and a leading researcher in OOL until his death.


> > Hurd shifts without warning to a completely different topic, and promptly produces a historical howler:

> >
> >>> “Irreducible Complexity” was originally proposed by Herman J. Muller in 1918.
> >

> > This is one of the most enduring falsehoods in the anti-ID literature.
> > Muller only talked about SOME components being essential. Irreducible complexity
> > says, by definition, that EACH AND EVERY component is essential.

Now you come in, Mark, with a generality and no specific examples, except for
Behe's teaching aid of a mousetrap.


> Well, in practice, Behe's IC, like Muller's, says that each and every
> one of the *essential* components is essential.

Wrong. Muller's "interlocking complexity" is applicable to the human body,
in which the heart is essential but the individual kidney is not essential.
That's what makes kidney donation such an important part of modern medicine.
And the individual kidney is far from irreducibly complex: you could lose
80% of the parts that make up your kidney, and as long as the rest is working efficiently,
you will be OK.

Behe's actual examples are different. Minnich broke down a bacterial flagellum
into its individual molecules, and found that each and every one of them
was essential to the basic function of swimming. Take away molecule X,
it doesn't swim; restore molecule X, it swims.

The individual components of the clotting system and the immune
system are molecules.


>To take an extreme and
> silly example, your ability to alter the company's logo on a mousetrap
> does not mean the mousetrap is not IC.

I'm glad you caught on to that much. It spares me from going into
detail on a satire I did a number of years ago about your use
(back then) of the word "part."

Anyway, the mousetrap has always been for educational purposes,
to illustrate the *concept* of irreducible complexity. Smart-alecky
nitpicks miss that point.


>And even if Muller's argument
> does talk about SOME components (actually, to quote him (p. 464), "very
> numerous different elementary parts or factors"), his argument does not
> change an iota if ALL components are involved.

I take it you are referring to loss of components making a formerly
nonessential component essential [same page]. That still doesn't
mean that ALL nonessential components suffer the same fate.
So the gulf between Behe and Muller is still there.

> >>> He called it "interlocking complexity," and showed how it was supporting evolutionary theory. That original paper was, "Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", Hermann J. Muller, Genetics, Vol 3, No 5: 422-499, Sept 1918.

Google was my friend, as usual. Bing betrayed me by sending me to a specific
webpage that was flagged as suspicious by my anti-virus software.
Bing has started using ChatGPT, so that might account for the difference.
What say you to that, Mark?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

U. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, September 27, 2023 at 12:45:50 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Sep 2023 19:14:16 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Yeah, jillery's trolling about echolocation

> 'Tis Glenn's troll, not mine.

The trolling to which I was referring was your claim that echolocation
had very little to do with bat evolution. In the part you deleted, I pointed out to Glenn
how wrong that was.

Here's more: it is naturally believed that bats evolved from animals
possessing "echolocation." If the known extant relatives of those
hypothetical echolocators (except bats themselves, of course)
aren't a lot better at it than we humans are, they've got their work
cut out for them to guess at the intermediate stages between it
and bat SONAR.

<libelous rest of your GIGO deleted>

> --
> To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge

True more of some than of others. I know what a great challenge
to evolutionary theory is posed by the evolution of bat SONAR. You are afraid to
discuss it with me, so you snipped what I wrote to Glenn about it.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

U. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Burkhard]

On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 7:25:49 PM UTC+1, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> You haven't answered any of MarkE's questions in his reply to this post of yours.
>
> It's obvious that your priorities lie elsewhere.
>
> I am skipping over the part of your post on which he had questions.
>
> On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 8:15:46 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
>
> That part ended at the following line:
> > ==========================================
> >
> > [1] If you are not familiar with the ideas of Teilhard De Chardin,
> > they can be difficult to initially grasp as Teilhard's writing is
> > almost impenetrable for the average reader. Essentially, his flow of
> > logic (in my words, not his) is:
>
> > - Everything that exists "wants" to join together.
> I'm very curious to know where Teilhard made such a naive and unscientific
> comment. It bespeaks a woeful ignorance about astrophysics.

My guess would be from :"heart of Matter". And while one can criticise Teilhard
in lots of ways, this is not one of them. Essentially, he revives the Aristotelian idea
of immanent telos ("sones fall to the ground b/c that's where they belong") with his
process theology - dynamic aspects of things are more important than static
aspects. The result is a metaphysics of matter - spiritual materialism. Not to everyone's
liking, Dawkins called it "the quintessence of bad poetic science", but consistent by design
with Newtonian physics at the least.

Reformulating classical mechanics in his vocabulary is relatively straightforward.
Your "counterexamples" are no problem for this, really. Merely because A and B want
to be together does not mean they get together - in the words of the Stones, "you can't
always get what you want - but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.

[Lawyer Daggett]

.
Girl, you really got me now. You got me so I don't know what I'm doing.

(I'm kinky that way)

[Lawyer Daggett]

Those comments don't play well with your assertion that you think like
a scientist. Here's why I say this. It is because you are playing fast and
loose with a distinction to pander to evolution deniers. Specifically,
there's a distinction between A.) "it would be nice to know" and
B.) "this is a mystery that defies our understanding of current theory".

Sure, it would be nice to know more specifics about the stages of development
of sonar in bats (or marine mammals). But is it that puzzling that it occurred?

I don't think so. Simple life, bacteria, have developed "senses". Chemotaxis
allows bacteria to sense concentration gradients and respond. We understand
how is rather significant detail down to specific chemical reactions involved.
Invertebrates with simplistic nervous systems respond to their environment
in ways that imply they have computed a response to sensory stimuli that
correctly models the 3D environment around them. Don't knee-jerk react to
sing and dance about how much more sophisticated bat echolocation is.
We're coming to that. The point is, very simple systems can and do sense
their environment effectively.

Leaping way ahead, many examples exist in vertebrates where vision and hearing
are used to craft that which are to best appearances "mental models" of the
environment around an animal. Your sense of hearing can be quite good at
providing you with an idea of the source of sound.

The understanding of vision is fairly advanced. Input from the optic nerve
connects to a structured neural network. The raw input passes through stages
of processing provide modeling of perspective and movement to achieve that
which we call vision whereby we "perceive" a model of our environment. Some
of the aspects by which this occur are "hard-wired" in the sense that certain
neuronal structures are developmentally biased. Others occur dynamically
under learning stimulus, and some can be dynamically "reprogrammed". The
science involved is amazing and sadly I'm out of date on the latest developments.

But there's every reason to think that most of that capacity existed prior to the
evolution of bat ancestors. Brains had developed the essential infrastructure
to craft 3D models of the surrounds, by sight and sound.

For what reasons would bat sonar pose some essential distinction? It isn't in
the sensing and processing. The key question is in the sending signal that gets
echoed. And that's not really that big of a puzzle. Some signaling simply gets
repurposed once a useful perception emerges from it.

Sure, it would be very nice to know more details about the stages of development.
That doesn't at all mean that not knowing those details poses a mystery that
casts doubt on the viability of the theory of evolution. And pandering to evolution
deniers because we don't happen to know the details of how it happened is
not honest.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, September 27, 2023 at 3:15:50 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 7:25:49 PM UTC+1, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > You haven't answered any of MarkE's questions in his reply to this post of yours.
> >
> > It's obvious that your priorities lie elsewhere.
> >
> > I am skipping over the part of your post on which he had questions.
> >
> > On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 8:15:46 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
> >
> > That part ended at the following line:
> > > ==========================================
> > >
> > > [1] If you are not familiar with the ideas of Teilhard De Chardin,
> > > they can be difficult to initially grasp as Teilhard's writing is
> > > almost impenetrable for the average reader. Essentially, his flow of
> > > logic (in my words, not his) is:
> >
> > > - Everything that exists "wants" to join together.

> > I'm very curious to know where Teilhard made such a naive and unscientific
> > comment. It bespeaks a woeful ignorance about astrophysics.

> My guess would be from :"heart of Matter". And while one can criticise Teilhard
> in lots of ways, this is not one of them.

You are talking below about teleology of unconscious matter, a concept
that has been banished from scientific methodology for about as
long as appeal to supernatural influences has been.

>Essentially, he revives the Aristotelian idea
> of immanent telos ("sones fall to the ground b/c that's where they belong") with his
> process theology - dynamic aspects of things are more important than static
> aspects.

This is, at best, pseudoscience. It has been abandoned by scientists just as surely
as the phlogiston theory.

>The result is a metaphysics of matter - spiritual materialism. Not to everyone's
> liking, Dawkins called it "the quintessence of bad poetic science", but consistent by design
> with Newtonian physics at the least.

Whatever that means. What has been kept of Newtonian physics (with modifications
due to relativity) has long been divorced from Aristotle-friendly Newtonian speculations on what
makes gravity work at a distance. The current paradigm is the mass of the earth warping the space
around it so that the time-space geodesic of an object close to the earth
is the route it takes. For this, we have Einstein to thank.

>
> Reformulating classical mechanics in his vocabulary is relatively straightforward.
> Your "counterexamples" are no problem for this, really. Merely because A and B want
> to be together does not mean they get together
>- in the words of the Stones, "you can't
> always get what you want - but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.

Yeah, like the moon "wanting" to join the earth, item (2) below, whereas what it needs
is to get further away, and so it gets further away.

Sure.

A healthy abandonment of Aristotelian "final cause" in preference to
Aristotelian "efficient cause" is the remedy for all this.

> > >This is
> > > demonstrated by how the particles that came into existence at the Big
> > > Bang joined together to form atoms; they in turn joined together to
> > > form molecules, eventually developing into matter in the form of stars

It turns out that this last sentence is highly suspect. The first stars were
made exclusively of hydrogen and helium [yes, the Big Bang theory is that many-faceted]
and so the only possible molecules were H_2. [Helium is chemically inert.]

But *was* there an appreciable quantity of hydrogen molecules? That seems
to depend on how hot the gases that condensed into the first star were.
At a high enough temperature they would just be atomic hydrogen, or even plasma:
a soup of free electrons and free protons.

And so, if Teilhard really meant to say all that, he probably blundered.
His only defense is that the Big Bang Theory was not yet the consensus
among physicists. Was he sufficiently knowledgeable to talk about why he rejected it,
despite it being the brainchild of a Catholic priest, and what he put in its place?

> > > and planets and eventually forming life, at least on our planet.


> > The opposite is "demonstrated" by the following facts:
> >
> > (1) The "wanting of atoms and molecules to come together" on earth
> > basically ended about 4 gigayears ago. If it had proceeded to where earth
> > would be about twice the diameter it is now, earth would be, like Venus,
> > inhospitable to life.
> >
> > (2) The moon formed quite close to the earth, and has been moving *away*
> > from it ever since due to tidal forces. If it had kept coming closer, it would
> > either crashed into the earth or raised such stupendous tides as to make
> > evolution to our species essentially impossible.

Did you read this far, Burkhard? How do you square (2) with your talk
about "telos" and the buzz word "immanent" that was such a fad
in the Teilhard social milieu?

> > (3) "The exception that proves the rule (1)": About 65 million years ago,
> > a ca. ten mile wide asteroid hit earth and raised an immense cloud of dust
> > that caused the food chains to collapse to where no animal weighing
> > more than 50 kilos is known to have survived. Had that asteroid been
> > ten times the diameter [I know of at least six asteroids that are larger than *that*],
> > all but the hardiest prokaryotes would have perished, setting evolution
> > on earth back a few gigayears.

Will you expand your use of the quote from the Stones by saying that
this one time the "wants" of the asteroid and its "needs" coincided?

For that, you (or Martin Harran) might need to assume that God wanted to wipe enough
of the slate clean so that *Homo* *sapiens* could evolve. That, however, is
an extremely anthropocentric assumption. It's a well known conjecture among paleontologists
that, had Troodon or some other brainy non-avian dinosaur not become extinct,
its descendants might have attained human-level intelligence by now.

> > And that would have put *finis* to evolution to our level of intelligence.
> > The sun keeps growing hotter, and it is estimated that it will be too hot
> > for life as we know it by the time one more
> > gigayear has passed.

According to Erik Simpson, it is only the *earth* that will become hotter
due to the increased *luminosity* of the sun. But the conclusion is still the same.

> >
> > And that's just looking at the possible fates for our little planet.
> > I could name a lot more flaws by looking further out, at least as serious.

The "molecule flaw" is one that hadn't even occurred to me when I wrote the
above sentence. I think several readers (but not including Martin Harran)
can figure out at least two reasons for the phenomenon I asked at the end:

> >
> > Got to go now. Duty calls. I'll leave you with this thought:
> > have you ever wondered why stars are typically so FAR apart?


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

U. of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[jillery]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2023 11:45:42 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> trolled:

>On Wednesday, September 27, 2023 at 12:45:50?AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 25 Sep 2023 19:14:16 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >Yeah, jillery's trolling about echolocation
>
>> 'Tis Glenn's troll, not mine.
>
>The trolling to which I was referring was your claim that echolocation
>had very little to do with bat evolution.

I made no such claim, liar. Instead of posting claims you know are
false and can't back up, why not respond to what posters actually
wrote, if only for a refreshing change of pace?

>In the part you deleted, I pointed out to Glenn
> how wrong that was.

The part I deleted had nothing to do with anything anybody wrote aka
obfuscating noise aka GIGO.

><libelous rest of your GIGO deleted>

works for me too.

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2023 12:13:17 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
<b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:

>On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 7:25:49?PM UTC+1, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> You haven't answered any of MarkE's questions in his reply to this post of yours.
>>
>> It's obvious that your priorities lie elsewhere.
>>
>> I am skipping over the part of your post on which he had questions.
>>

>> On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 8:15:46?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
>>
>> That part ended at the following line:
>> > ==========================================
>> >
>> > [1] If you are not familiar with the ideas of Teilhard De Chardin,
>> > they can be difficult to initially grasp as Teilhard's writing is
>> > almost impenetrable for the average reader. Essentially, his flow of
>> > logic (in my words, not his) is:
>>
>> > - Everything that exists "wants" to join together.
>> I'm very curious to know where Teilhard made such a naive and unscientific
>> comment. It bespeaks a woeful ignorance about astrophysics.
>
>
>My guess would be from :"heart of Matter".

I didn't have any single source in mind. Teilhard detailed his ideas
in two full books and multiple essays; I was trying to give Mark an
overall sense of those ideas in just a few brief sentences. That is
why I explicitly qualified it as "in my words, not his". I put quotes
around the word "wants" because I was using it in an anthropomorphic
sense, just like Dawkins talking about "selfish" genes.

Peter as usual sees what Peter wants to see.

[Burkhard]

On Wednesday, September 27, 2023 at 11:10:50 PM UTC+1, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 27, 2023 at 3:15:50 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> > On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 7:25:49 PM UTC+1, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > You haven't answered any of MarkE's questions in his reply to this post of yours.
> > >
> > > It's obvious that your priorities lie elsewhere.
> > >
> > > I am skipping over the part of your post on which he had questions.
> > >
> > > On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 8:15:46 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
> > >
> > > That part ended at the following line:
> > > > ==========================================
> > > >
> > > > [1] If you are not familiar with the ideas of Teilhard De Chardin,
> > > > they can be difficult to initially grasp as Teilhard's writing is
> > > > almost impenetrable for the average reader. Essentially, his flow of
> > > > logic (in my words, not his) is:
> > >
> > > > - Everything that exists "wants" to join together.
>
> > > I'm very curious to know where Teilhard made such a naive and unscientific
> > > comment. It bespeaks a woeful ignorance about astrophysics.
>
> > My guess would be from :"heart of Matter". And while one can criticise Teilhard
> > in lots of ways, this is not one of them.
> You are talking below about teleology of unconscious matter, a concept
> that has been banished from scientific methodology for about as
> long as appeal to supernatural influences has been.

And that would matter if Teilhard tried to develop a new scientific theory.
He doesn't, so it isn't - rather he develops a metaphysics of matter that
tries as a philosophical doctrine to reconcile materialism with theology.

if you want to criticise it, you have to do it mainly on theological grounds -
from a scientific perspective, while it is not Occam-optimal, all
observations and predictions are preserved, so there can't be a conflict.

As for the general idea of teleology of matter from a scientific perspective,
he is not quite as alone as you make him out to be - Ayala e.g. has argued that
while it is always possible to translate teleological into non-teleological
explanations and vice versa, the former carries excess explanatory weight that
can be beneficial (in "Adaptation and novelty: teleological explanations in
evolutionary biology"). Or as Haldane put it, " "Teleology is like a mistress
to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public."


True, Chardin's teleology is more radical than either, but he'd argue that
he simply provides a metaphysical foundation for the intuition that they
both share. He gets close to a philosopher you like though - Hans Jonas'
"degrees of freedom" get in the same direction, as does Bergson's philosophy.

More recently, biologists like Grace de Laguna or Peter Corning seem to go in this
direction, these ideas wax and vane I'd say. And in consciousness studies, pan-
psychism has seen if anything a strong revival - we had recently a discussion
with Bill Rogers on this here on TO

> >Essentially, he revives the Aristotelian idea
> > of immanent telos ("sones fall to the ground b/c that's where they belong") with his
> > process theology - dynamic aspects of things are more important than static
> > aspects.
> This is, at best, pseudoscience. It has been abandoned by scientists just as surely
> as the phlogiston theory.

It's not meant to be a scientific theory, it's a theological interpretation of
scientific theories that remains consistent with all scientific predictions
while leaving space for an immanent deity.

> >The result is a metaphysics of matter - spiritual materialism. Not to everyone's
> > liking, Dawkins called it "the quintessence of bad poetic science", but consistent by design
> > with Newtonian physics at the least.
> Whatever that means.

The physics of medium sized objects - i.e. not quantum physics

What has been kept of Newtonian physics (with modifications
> due to relativity) has long been divorced from Aristotle-friendly Newtonian speculations on what
> makes gravity work at a distance. The current paradigm is the mass of the earth warping the space
> around it so that the time-space geodesic of an object close to the earth
> is the route it takes. For this, we have Einstein to thank.
> >
> > Reformulating classical mechanics in his vocabulary is relatively straightforward.
> > Your "counterexamples" are no problem for this, really. Merely because A and B want
> > to be together does not mean they get together
> >- in the words of the Stones, "you can't
> > always get what you want - but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.
> Yeah, like the moon "wanting" to join the earth, item (2) below, whereas what it needs
> is to get further away, and so it gets further away.
>
> Sure.

as I said, his philosophy is not everybody's cup of tea, but as a way to reconcile
direct divine presence with science, it sort of works. Your won preferences
seem to be more wih Dawkins philosophical reductionism, which is of course fine, but
if you criticise Chardin you should do it for the right reasons, Conflict with
scientific theory is not one of them ,

>
> A healthy abandonment of Aristotelian "final cause" in preference to
> Aristotelian "efficient cause" is the remedy for all this.
> > > >This is
> > > > demonstrated by how the particles that came into existence at the Big
> > > > Bang joined together to form atoms; they in turn joined together to
> > > > form molecules, eventually developing into matter in the form of stars
> It turns out that this last sentence is highly suspect. The first stars were
> made exclusively of hydrogen and helium [yes, the Big Bang theory is that many-faceted]
> and so the only possible molecules were H_2. [Helium is chemically inert.]
>
> But *was* there an appreciable quantity of hydrogen molecules? That seems
> to depend on how hot the gases that condensed into the first star were.
> At a high enough temperature they would just be atomic hydrogen, or even plasma:
> a soup of free electrons and free protons.
>
> And so, if Teilhard really meant to say all that, he probably blundered.
> His only defense is that the Big Bang Theory was not yet the consensus
> among physicists. Was he sufficiently knowledgeable to talk about why he rejected it,
> despite it being the brainchild of a Catholic priest, and what he put in its place?

Don't know what you mean with that. I'm not aware that Chardin ever rejected
the Big Bang

> > > > and planets and eventually forming life, at least on our planet.
>
>
> > > The opposite is "demonstrated" by the following facts:
> > >
> > > (1) The "wanting of atoms and molecules to come together" on earth
> > > basically ended about 4 gigayears ago. If it had proceeded to where earth
> > > would be about twice the diameter it is now, earth would be, like Venus,
> > > inhospitable to life.
> > >
> > > (2) The moon formed quite close to the earth, and has been moving *away*
> > > from it ever since due to tidal forces. If it had kept coming closer, it would
> > > either crashed into the earth or raised such stupendous tides as to make
> > > evolution to our species essentially impossible.
> Did you read this far, Burkhard? How do you square (2) with your talk
> about "telos" and the buzz word "immanent" that was such a fad
> in the Teilhard social milieu?

If you mean with "fad" 1500 years or so, and with "social milieu" catholic theology,
the answer is simple. There is no conflict between his idea and these observations.
It just means the moons telos is not to crash into earth, After all, you are also not
arguing that "gravity pulls two objects together", therefore the fact that the moon
moves away from earth falsifies gravity, do you?

> > > (3) "The exception that proves the rule (1)": About 65 million years ago,
> > > a ca. ten mile wide asteroid hit earth and raised an immense cloud of dust
> > > that caused the food chains to collapse to where no animal weighing
> > > more than 50 kilos is known to have survived. Had that asteroid been
> > > ten times the diameter [I know of at least six asteroids that are larger than *that*],
> > > all but the hardiest prokaryotes would have perished, setting evolution
> > > on earth back a few gigayears.
> Will you expand your use of the quote from the Stones by saying that
> this one time the "wants" of the asteroid and its "needs" coincided?
>
> For that, you (or Martin Harran) might need to assume that God wanted to wipe enough
> of the slate clean so that *Homo* *sapiens* could evolve. That, however, is
> an extremely anthropocentric assumption. It's a well known conjecture among paleontologists
> that, had Troodon or some other brainy non-avian dinosaur not become extinct,
> its descendants might have attained human-level intelligence by now.

Interesting idea, but I don't think Chardin would argue quite like this - the needs and
wants only lead to progressively more complex systems, not to changes of that
detail. But then again, even deists, let alone traditional theists, would have to
assume that the extinction of dinosaurs was part of God's plan - at least foreseen
by him when he thought this universe into being. So I'm not sure you get much
purchase out of this, unless you commit explicitly to a version of atheism.

[Martin Harran]

On Mon, 25 Sep 2023 05:09:10 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 10:15:46?PM UTC+10, Martin Harran wrote:

[…snip for focus…]

>Are you saying you're okay with special revelation giving us a God with whom we can have a personal relationship, but not sure how that leads to special creation as opposed to theistic evolution or de Chardin's Omega Point teleology?

In regard to Revelation, I think that there is another aspect of
Genesis which is highly significant. Up until the early 20th century,
scientists were convinced that the universe had always existed. The
writers of Genesis 4000 years ago (and probably relating stories that
went a lot further back in time) somehow knew long before science even
came into existence, that the universe had a specific beginning. They
also knew that it came into existence not all at once but in a series
of sequential phases. The detail of those phases as related in Genesis
might not be completely correct but this comes across to me as like a
hazy memory which gets minor things wrong but the important things
right,

It seems like a good argument for either our "consciousness" to have
existed prior to, or at least at the Big Bang and somehow carrying
memories from that time or alternatively our consciousness being able
to somehow tap into the fullness promised by Christ where we will
understand everything, albeit in a limited or sporadic way.

[…]

[Martin Harran]

Clarification: "albeit in a limited or sporadic way" refers to our
ability to 'tap in' not our ability to ultimately understand
everything.

[Mark Isaak]

On 9/27/23 11:11 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 9/22/23 2:34 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 4:15:44 PM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:

[big skip for focus]

Okay, I accept that Muller's interlocking complexity allows some
non-essential parts. However, it does not *require* them. Thus Behe's
(original) irreducible complexity is a subset of Muller's interlocking
complexity.

Muller remains significant in that he showed how Behe's IC could evolve
naturally, indeed that such systems might be expected to evolve. Of
course, he preceded Behe by decades, so he was not directly addressing
Behe's claims, and he did not (as far as I know) mention the other ways
that Behe's IC could evolve gradually. For example, possible ambiguity
in what may be regarded as a "part", which Peter thinks he can ignore
now that he has made up a lampoon about it.

>
>>>>> He called it "interlocking complexity," and showed how it was supporting evolutionary theory. That original paper was, "Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", Hermann J. Muller, Genetics, Vol 3, No 5: 422-499, Sept 1918.
>
> Google was my friend, as usual. Bing betrayed me by sending me to a specific
> webpage that was flagged as suspicious by my anti-virus software.
> Bing has started using ChatGPT, so that might account for the difference.
> What say you to that, Mark?

Why do you ask?? Did you forget to "skip for focus"?

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Last week was so busy, that on Friday I only had time to do one post
on Usenet - a short but sweet one on sci.bio.paleontology.

Speaking of paleontology: Teilhard de Chardin, whom we discuss below,
was hypothesized by Stephen Jay Gould to be the culprit behind the
Piltdown hoax. The hypothesis was that, with his knowledge of anatomy,
he knew how to create a convincing "partial skull" whose pieces Dawson
could easily find where he planted them. But the majority opinion was and is
that the culprit was Dawson himself.

That is impossible if you banish all empirical information, including what
led to a scientific theory, e.g. gravity, Newton, apple, moon, etc. from
your attempt, which you allege that Teilhard WAS trying to do.

Do you have a specific article/book by Teilhard in mind?

> if you want to criticise it, you have to do it mainly on theological grounds -
> from a scientific perspective, while it is not Occam-optimal, all
> observations and predictions are preserved, so there can't be a conflict.

"preserved" = paid lip service but ignored?
See above.

> As for the general idea of teleology of matter from a scientific perspective,
> he is not quite as alone as you make him out to be

He is highly heterodox, regardless. Not having read anything by Ayala,
I won't try to guess who is the heterodox of the two.

>- Ayala e.g. has argued that
> while it is always possible to translate teleological into non-teleological
> explanations and vice versa, the former carries excess explanatory weight that
> can be beneficial

...but loses tremendously in explanatory weight by jettisoning data
that seem to conflict with the former, as in the concrete examples below.

>(in "Adaptation and novelty: teleological explanations in
> evolutionary biology"). Or as Haldane put it, " "Teleology is like a mistress
> to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public."

Cute , but the bottom line seems to be that any biologist uses
all kinds of metaphors (and not just teleological ones) to guide his/her
[a hint of lesbianism there :-) ]
intuition about what supporting data to look for.

I know the process well: in almost all my topological proofs,
I carry fictitious pictures (visual ones -- my spatial intuition far ourstrips my computational intuition)
of the complicated structures that can only be described by formulae, or even just
set-theoretic definitions.

>
>
> True, Chardin's teleology is more radical than either, but he'd argue that
> he simply provides a metaphysical foundation for the intuition that they
> both share. He gets close to a philosopher you like though - Hans Jonas'
> "degrees of freedom" get in the same direction, as does Bergson's philosophy.

Hans Jonas was nothing like Teilhard. With all the fanfare these days about
AI, his essay "Cybernetics and Purpose: a Critique" ought to be required reading
for all students of AI. His key distinction there is that there is huge confusion
between "having a purpose" and "carrying out a purpose [imposed on the machine
by its designer[s]" At one point he says of a hypothetical person substituting
for the servomechanism of a torpedo, that he could dismount from
the torpedo and "take the purpose with him, complete and unabridged".

Jonas could have cut thorough Teilhard's mumbo jumbo like a hot knife through butter.

Correction: Teilhard's thoughts translated by Martin Harran. Maybe he would
be willing to explain to you how loose the translation is. His agenda forbids
him to discuss science, theology, philosophy, history, Catholicism, Biblical scholarship ... with me.
He is only interested in personal issues where I am concerned.

>
> More recently, biologists like Grace de Laguna or Peter Corning seem to go in this
> direction, these ideas wax and vane I'd say. And in consciousness studies, pan-
> psychism has seen if anything a strong revival - we had recently a discussion
> with Bill Rogers on this here on TO

Who is "we", paleface? [Allusion to > 65 year old joke there.]
Bill's agenda forces him to completely ignore all posts by me-- he's been
that way for something like 5 years now.

> > >Essentially, he revives the Aristotelian idea
> > > of immanent telos ("sones fall to the ground b/c that's where they belong") with his
> > > process theology - dynamic aspects of things are more important than static
> > > aspects.
> > This is, at best, pseudoscience. It has been abandoned by scientists just as surely
> > as the phlogiston theory.

> It's not meant to be a scientific theory, it's a theological interpretation of
> scientific theories that remains consistent with all scientific predictions
> while leaving space for an immanent deity.

Aristotle, a theologian? As a biologist he was a very unreliable guide.
For instance, he thought that the human embryo was formed from
the menstrual blood of the mother, congealed by the sperm of the father.

Traces of his misconception lingered as far as Laurence Sterne's novel "Tristam Shandy."
See Needham's history of embryology.

> > >The result is a metaphysics of matter - spiritual materialism. Not to everyone's
> > > liking, Dawkins called it "the quintessence of bad poetic science", but consistent by design
> > > with Newtonian physics at the least.

> > Whatever that means.

> The physics of medium sized objects - i.e. not quantum physics

I wanted to know what you meant by "consistent," it being consistent
with naked-eye observations that Earth is the only planet in our solar system with a moon.

> > What has been kept of Newtonian physics (with modifications
> > due to relativity) has long been divorced from Aristotle-friendly Newtonian speculations on what
> > makes gravity work at a distance. The current paradigm is the mass of the earth warping the space
> > around it so that the time-space geodesic of an object close to the earth
> > is the route it takes. For this, we have Einstein to thank.

> > >
> > > Reformulating classical mechanics in his vocabulary is relatively straightforward.

> > > Your "counterexamples" are no problem for this, really. Merely because A and B want
> > > to be together does not mean they get together
> > >- in the words of the Stones, "you can't
> > > always get what you want - but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.

> > Yeah, like the moon "wanting" to join the earth, item (2) below, whereas what it needs
> > is to get further away, and so it gets further away.
> >
> > Sure.

> as I said, his philosophy is not everybody's cup of tea, but as a way to reconcile
> direct divine presence with science, it sort of works.

So direct divine presence says that the moon needed to be so far from the
earth by the time man appeared, that most people die before ever
having had a chance to see a total solar eclipse?

I must be divinely favored, because my house was almost in the
middle of the direct path of totality of the August 21, 2017 solar eclipse that was
seen in a narrow band from the north Pacific coast to the south
Atlantic coast of the USA. :) :)

And although parts of the Columbia area were clouded over,
the sky was almost completely cloudless
where I was standing in my back yard.

I'm not the only one in my family who is so blessed. :) :) :)
My oldest sister will have the path of totality pass right through HER house
in Indiana during next year's April 8, 2024 solar eclipse. I've got another sister
and a brother living within half a day's driving distance from her.

> Your won preferences
> seem to be more wih Dawkins philosophical reductionism, which is of course fine, but
> if you criticise Chardin you should do it for the right reasons, Conflict with
> scientific theory is not one of them ,

Conflict with divine fairness may be one of them. "He makes the sun to shine on the
good and evil alike," but he may have other ideas about the sun's eclipses. :)

But seriously, you need to think very carefully about what I wrote next:

> > A healthy abandonment of Aristotelian "final cause" in preference to
> > Aristotelian "efficient cause" is the remedy for all this.

You had no comment to make on this before; would you like to address it now?


Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. I still have a lot of
duties connected with my two sections of differential equations
to take care of today, so it will probably have to wait until tomorrow.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

[peter2...@gmail.com]

That's like saying that humans are a subset of Mammalia. Doesn't tell
us much about our fellow humans. [Although Jonathan Swift did try
in Gulliver's Fourth Voyage.]

> Muller remains significant in that he showed how Behe's IC could evolve
> naturally, indeed that such systems might be expected to evolve.

By armchair theorists who don't look at such things but speculate in airy rhetorical
ways about them, minimizing their difficulty by the same one-size-fits-all generalities
that anti-ID zealots use to minimize the difficulty of OOL.

Find a system that could evolve more easily than the irreducibly complex
bacterial flagellum Minnich researched [see above], and work just as well or better, and which becomes
a bacterial flagellum by losing a bunch of parts.

Don't kick the can down the road by taking a bacterial flagellum on
a gram-negative bacterium and losing some parts to make a gram-positive
flagellum which doesn't need one of its rings because there is one less
layer of cell covering to deal with. You will be evolving a harder-to-evolve
bacterium into an easier-to-evolve one.

> Of course, he preceded Behe by decades, so he was not directly addressing
> Behe's claims, and he did not (as far as I know) mention the other ways
> that Behe's IC could evolve gradually. For example, possible ambiguity
> in what may be regarded as a "part", which Peter thinks he can ignore
> now that he has made up a lampoon about it.

Not a lampoon. A challenge for you to fix your thinking about the definition of "part"
to where you realize that the relevant parts of Behe's serious examples are MOLECULES.

Do you know enough chemistry to know how different chemical bonds are from physical
attachments? Or chemical reactions are from physical ones?

> >
> >>>>> He called it "interlocking complexity," and showed how it was supporting evolutionary theory. That original paper was, "Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", Hermann J. Muller, Genetics, Vol 3, No 5: 422-499, Sept 1918.
> >
> > Google was my friend, as usual. Bing betrayed me by sending me to a specific
> > webpage that was flagged as suspicious by my anti-virus software.
> > Bing has started using ChatGPT, so that might account for the difference.

> > What say you to that, Mark?

> Why do you ask?? Did you forget to "skip for focus"?

What's the point of this snarky evasion? I am genuinely interested in the answer. If this
is the way search engines are to be in the AI-controlled future, it will be the nanny state
to end all nanny states.

I thought you were a *professional* computer scientist. Which better talk.origins
regular to turn to than you?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

[Mark Isaak]

More like saying that insects are a subset of Hexapoda.

>> Muller remains significant in that he showed how Behe's IC could evolve
>> naturally, indeed that such systems might be expected to evolve.
>
> By armchair theorists who don't look at such things but speculate in airy rhetorical
> ways about them, minimizing their difficulty by the same one-size-fits-all generalities
> that anti-ID zealots use to minimize the difficulty of OOL.
>
> Find a system that could evolve more easily than the irreducibly complex
> bacterial flagellum Minnich researched [see above], and work just as well or better, and which becomes
> a bacterial flagellum by losing a bunch of parts.

Minnich never tried to find such a system. Neither have you. Muller at
least pointed a way past the apparent roadblocks.

>> Of course, he preceded Behe by decades, so he was not directly addressing
>> Behe's claims, and he did not (as far as I know) mention the other ways
>> that Behe's IC could evolve gradually. For example, possible ambiguity
>> in what may be regarded as a "part", which Peter thinks he can ignore
>> now that he has made up a lampoon about it.
>
> Not a lampoon. A challenge for you to fix your thinking about the definition of "part"
> to where you realize that the relevant parts of Behe's serious examples are MOLECULES.

How is that relevant?

> Do you know enough chemistry to know how different chemical bonds are from physical
> attachments? Or chemical reactions are from physical ones?

I'm sure you know that molecules can be created, destroyed, and, most
importantly, altered, right? In particular, you know that such changes
of molecules are *essential* to the life of a cell? To consider
molecules as the relevant "parts" is absurd.

>>>>>>> He called it "interlocking complexity," and showed how it was supporting evolutionary theory. That original paper was, "Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", Hermann J. Muller, Genetics, Vol 3, No 5: 422-499, Sept 1918.
>>>
>>> Google was my friend, as usual. Bing betrayed me by sending me to a specific
>>> webpage that was flagged as suspicious by my anti-virus software.
>>> Bing has started using ChatGPT, so that might account for the difference.
>
>>> What say you to that, Mark?
>
>> Why do you ask?? Did you forget to "skip for focus"?
>
> What's the point of this snarky evasion? I am genuinely interested in the answer. If this
> is the way search engines are to be in the AI-controlled future, it will be the nanny state
> to end all nanny states.
>
> I thought you were a *professional* computer scientist. Which better talk.origins
> regular to turn to than you?

Okay. I suggest in the future you signal such changes in topic (e.g.,
"Drastic subject change coming").

I have never worked with or on AI; I have never (knowingly) used
ChatGPT; and I have not used Bing in many years. Whereof I cannot
speak, thereof I must be silent.

[Martin Harran]

On Mon, 2 Oct 2023 12:33:31 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

<snip for focus>

>Correction: Teilhard's thoughts translated by Martin Harran. Maybe he would
>be willing to explain to you how loose the translation is. His agenda forbids
>him to discuss science, theology, philosophy, history, Catholicism, Biblical scholarship ... with me.

For reasons explained to you multiple times as in the example link
given earlier:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/NIB_EKCCffU/m/0vSy5dFEBAAJ

>He is only interested in personal issues where I am concerned.

Correction of your so-called correction: what you try to brush off as
" only interested in personal issues" is me highlighting when you post
bullshit about me without "an iota of evidence" which is what you
yourself have described as a sign of psychosis.

<snip>

[jillery]

So follow your own advice and killfile him.

[JTEM is my hero]

Pathetic, jillery wrote:

> JTEM's parrot.

You are so feeble, so worthless that you believe you can
strengthen yourself by the mere mention of me.

I am your god. And, yes, that make you pathetic.




-- --

https://jtem.tumblr.com/post/727701377221083136

[peter2...@gmail.com]

I'll be telling you some things in this post about a talk.origins regular (Martin Harran) who posted
about me just before your post on this thread, JTEM. I'll be directly replying to him
tomorrow, if all goes as planned.

On Wednesday, October 4, 2023 at 2:50:58 PM UTC-4, JTEM is my hero wrote:

> Pathetic, jillery wrote:
>
> > JTEM's parrot.
>
> You are so feeble, so worthless that you believe you can
> strengthen yourself by the mere mention of me.

Jillery is using mention of your name to pretend that you
and I are like birds of a feather.

Which is utter nonsense. We have vehemently clashed many times this year alone.
I don't have a good overall opinion of you, and I suspect you don't have one of me.

But that doesn't keep you and me from being respectful to each other when discussing
purely scientific matters.

The same is true of jillery, by the way. We even come to agreement on some
things occasionally.

I am that way with everyone who has ever posted to talk.origins.
On every scholarly subject, not just science.


And all except Martin Harran have reciprocated from time to time.
Despite being a Roman Catholic, he has never figured out what Jesus meant
about loving one's enemies.

[At least, that is true in my case: that may be because
he unilaterally decided to become my enemy after I struggled mightily
to show what an injustice jillery had committed against him once.
Martin may be the sort of whom it is said, "He can let no good deed go unpunished."]

Martin is also, AFAIK, the only t.o. regular besides me who is a member of the Roman
Catholic Church. That just goes to show how the term "catholic" was
very well chosen. Each Catholic has perfect freedom to go to either
heaven or hell after his/her/their/whatever own fashion.


Mind you, I am quite skeptical about a life after death. But if there
is one, I hope it will be like in C.S. Lewis's _The Great Divorce_,
not like the "Wrathful Son in Heaven" who sends some souls to eternal
torment, nor the "Doting Grandfather in Heaven" who forgives
everything everyone has done even without them having to repent of it
or to change their ways.


Peter Nyikos

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 4 Oct 2023 12:53:00 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I'll be telling you some things in this post about a talk.origins regular (Martin Harran) who posted
>about me just before your post on this thread, JTEM. I'll be directly replying to him
>tomorrow, if all goes as planned.

Is this like the reply you said back in March that you would give
*next week* but still haven't?

[匽

>And all except Martin Harran have reciprocated from time to time.
>Despite being a Roman Catholic, he has never figured out what Jesus meant
>about loving one's enemies.
>
>[At least, that is true in my case: that may be because
>he unilaterally decided to become my enemy after I struggled mightily
>to show what an injustice jillery had committed against him once.
>Martin may be the sort of whom it is said, "He can let no good deed go unpunished."]
>
>Martin is also, AFAIK, the only t.o. regular besides me who is a member of the Roman
>Catholic Church. That just goes to show how the term "catholic" was
>very well chosen. Each Catholic has perfect freedom to go to either
>heaven or hell after his/her/their/whatever own fashion.
>

[匽

WOW, Jtem now knows so much about me that he never knew before!

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 11:50:56 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Oct 2023 12:33:31 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip for focus>

>>Jonas could have cut thorough Teilhard's mumbo jumbo like a hot knife through butter.

> >Correction: Teilhard's thoughts translated by Martin Harran. Maybe he would
> >be willing to explain to you how loose the translation is. His agenda forbids
> >him to discuss science, theology, philosophy, history, Catholicism, Biblical scholarship ... with me.

> For reasons explained to you multiple times as in the example link
> given earlier:
>
> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/NIB_EKCCffU/m/0vSy5dFEBAAJ

Even if what you wrote there were true, your "reasons" would be childish excuses.
See the part you snipped out of my reply to JTEM for my statement about how you are unique in
resorting to such excuses. Can you find anything to refute there?

Here, I'll save you a bit of trouble. I forgot about Ron Okimoto: he too has an agenda forbidding
him to discuss scholarly topics with me, but his excuses are a tad less self-centered than yours.

> >He is only interested in personal issues where I am concerned.

> Correction of your so-called correction:

Yours is the opposite of a correction. You *illustrate* what I wrote
by ranting about a personal issue:

> what you try to brush off as
> " only interested in personal issues" is

...your interactions with me ever since you stopped
calling yourself AlwaysAskingQuestions. How many years has that been?

> me highlighting when you post
> bullshit about me without "an iota of evidence" which is what you
> yourself have described as a sign of psychosis.

Are you trying to get on Ron Okimoto's good side by flagrantly distorting
my reaction to something he wrote?

Or are you trying to make me look ignorant of what psychosis is really like?

Or are YOU so ignorant of psychology that you think that posting bullshit
about someone without backing it up on the spot is a sign of psychosis?


Whatever the reason for posting the above falsehood about what I "have described...", it isn't pretty,
except perhaps in the eyes of Ron Okimoto or yourself.


Peter Nyikos

PS To spare curious readers a fruitless search on this thread, I've provided data
for the statement about which you posted bullshit above, without an iota of evidence:

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/TvU0pcdovFU/m/dVBq7qs3BgAJ
Re: More IDiotic Cambrian explosion stupidty for IDiots to deny

[Martin Harran]

On Thu, 5 Oct 2023 17:55:55 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 11:50:56?AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
>> On Mon, 2 Oct 2023 12:33:31 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
>> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> <snip for focus>
>
>>>Jonas could have cut thorough Teilhard's mumbo jumbo like a hot knife through butter.
>> >Correction: Teilhard's thoughts translated by Martin Harran. Maybe he would
>> >be willing to explain to you how loose the translation is. His agenda forbids
>> >him to discuss science, theology, philosophy, history, Catholicism, Biblical scholarship ... with me.
>
>> For reasons explained to you multiple times as in the example link
>> given earlier:
>>
>> https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/NIB_EKCCffU/m/0vSy5dFEBAAJ
>
>Even if what you wrote there were true, your "reasons" would be childish excuses.

There are no 'ifs' about it nor childish excuses. You've given a
perfect example of the sort of thing I referred to by dragging Ron
Okimoto's name ithree times into what is supposed to be a direct reply
to me.

>See the part you snipped out of my reply to JTEM for my statement about how you are unique in
>resorting to such excuses. Can you find anything to refute there?

How many times or how many ways do I have to tell you that I have no
interest in what goes on or doesn't go on between you and other
posters?

Having said that, you have reminded me of another one of your false
claims in that post but I will deal with it in a direct response to
that post.

>
>Here, I'll save you a bit of trouble. I forgot about Ron Okimoto: he too has an agenda forbidding
>him to discuss scholarly topics with me, but his excuses are a tad less self-centered than yours.
>
>
>
>> >He is only interested in personal issues where I am concerned.
>
>> Correction of your so-called correction:
>
>Yours is the opposite of a correction. You *illustrate* what I wrote
>by ranting about a personal issue:
>
>
>> what you try to brush off as
>> " only interested in personal issues" is
>
>...your interactions with me ever since you stopped
>calling yourself AlwaysAskingQuestions. How many years has that been?

A lot less years than you have been irritating other posters by doing
the things I described in that previous post.

>
>
>> me highlighting when you post
>> bullshit about me without "an iota of evidence" which is what you
>> yourself have described as a sign of psychosis.
>
>Are you trying to get on Ron Okimoto's good side by flagrantly distorting
>my reaction to something he wrote?
>
>Or are you trying to make me look ignorant of what psychosis is really like?
>
>Or are YOU so ignorant of psychology that you think that posting bullshit
>about someone without backing it up on the spot is a sign of psychosis?

Do I *really* have to remind you that it was youreself who came up
with that theory?

>
>
>Whatever the reason for posting the above falsehood about what I "have described...", it isn't pretty,

Very little of anything you post warrants a description of "pretty".

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 4 Oct 2023 12:53:00 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

[snip for focus]

>And all except Martin Harran have reciprocated from time to time.
>Despite being a Roman Catholic, he has never figured out what Jesus meant
>about loving one's enemies.
>
>[At least, that is true in my case: that may be because
>he unilaterally decided to become my enemy after I struggled mightily
>to show what an injustice jillery had committed against him once.
>Martin may be the sort of whom it is said, "He can let no good deed go unpunished."]

Yet another falsehood needing corrected. What actually happened was:

1) Jillery shuffled the parts of a post which made my reply to a
specific point look as if it was a reply to an entirely different
point which in turn made my reply look illogical if not silly.

2) When I pointed this out, she initially denied it and tried to
divert attention by attacking me for using the word "snipping" to
describe what she had done as the original text was still preserved;
she made no attempt to explain why she had put the text out of
sequence.

3) I went through exactly what she had done, step by step.

4) At that stage, you tried to jump on the bandwagon and sought to
join up with me in battling Jillery. (Note: on several occasions since
then, you have tried to claim credit for spotting what Jillery had
done in that post but you didn't spot it, you just picked up on my
step by step explanation.)

5) I declined your offer, telling you that I had no interest in what
was going on between you and Jillery and that I am more than capable
of fighting my own battles.

6) *You* were the one who took great umbrage at me declining your
offer and thereafter went on a continuing sniping match against me at
every opportunity you got - and even inventing opportunity where none
existed.

[jillery]

On Fri, 06 Oct 2023 15:18:54 +0100, Martin Harran
<martin...@gmail.com> wrote:


Here's another example where Harran lies about jillery while at the
same time falling for PeeWee Peter's lies about jillery. It's as if
these two have nothing better to do.

So follow your own advice and killfile him, and spare the froup your
asinine angst.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, October 6, 2023 at 10:21:00 AM UTC-4, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Oct 2023 12:53:00 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
> <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [snip for focus]

> >And all except Martin Harran have reciprocated from time to time.
> >Despite being a Roman Catholic, he has never figured out what Jesus meant
> >about loving one's enemies.
> >
> >[At least, that is true in my case: that may be because
> >he unilaterally decided to become my enemy after I struggled mightily
> >to show what an injustice jillery had committed against him once.
> >Martin may be the sort of whom it is said, "He can let no good deed go unpunished."]

> Yet another falsehood needing corrected.

Like most internet hellions, you have a way of riding roughshod over conditional
word, phrases, etc. In this case, "may be" is one possible explanation
of your despicable behavior during the years since the incident took place.

But I stand by what I wrote before that last sentence.


What you wrote below about that incident is one-sidedly
self-serving, to say the least.

> What actually happened was:
>
> 1) Jillery shuffled the parts of a post which made my reply to a
> specific point look as if it was a reply to an entirely different
> point which in turn made my reply look illogical if not silly.

In fact, it made your reply look like you were agreeing with jillery about being in
a different universe than honest people.

> 2) When I pointed this out, she initially denied it and tried to
> divert attention by attacking me for using the word "snipping" to
> describe what she had done as the original text was still preserved;
> she made no attempt to explain why she had put the text out of
> sequence.

2.5) You complained about what jillery had done. Her rearranging of text was buried
so deep in a long reply to you, that I would never have found it if
you hadn't complained about it. The complaint may have been in the process
of a post you describe next.

> 3) I went through exactly what she had done, step by step.

Please provide an url and/or the Subject line and/or date for this post, or any
of the earlier posts on this dispute.

>
> 4) At that stage,

... seeing that jillery continued her denial of any wrongdoing, my disinterested thirst for
justice was kindled. On another occasion, it was jillery herself who wasn't getting
justice from your fellow ethnic Irishman [1] named Sean [2], who had accused jillery
of "character assassination," but refused to answer jillery's request to know what
meaning he attached to that epithet.

I told jillery that I believed Sean owed her an explanation, and added that
of course, whether she collected on "the debt" was entirely between her and Sean.

At that, Sean rather hastily gave a definition that I had never seen before.
Unlike the Merriam-Webster definition, it carried no hint that the accusations
involved had to be false, or unsupported.

This answer was satisfactory for all three of us. Case closed.


[1] I say "ethnic Irishman" since IIRC he lived in Los Angeles.
[2] His surname escapes me at the moment, but I know it wasn't "Dillon."



Back to the incidents at hand:

> you tried to jump on the bandwagon

There was no bandwagon against jillery.

You had been battling jillery alone, and then I battled jillery alone for a long time.
I took tremendous abuse from jillery, and even more from her ardent ally
Oxyaena. Others jumped on the pro-jillery bandwagon, though in a milder way.

The same Sean I wrote about above posted a reply to me [but NOT to jillery], saying
that he wished I would stop, and claimed that I was "only hurting" myself by continuing.
I replied that there were only two, diametrically opposite ways that I could
make sense of that comment: One, that jillery is so much more popular
than I am that continuing would just bring more abuse on my head;
two, that I am so much more respected than jillery that it would be hurting
myself to be spending so much time on a fruitless pursuit.

Sean, predictably, did not address that, but simply reiterated his wish
that I stop. [No mention of the possibility of jillery stopping.]

> and sought to join up with me in battling Jillery.

I don't recall any such seeking. I was acting on my own love of justice and had no problem
with you having completely fallen silent during the long battle.


[Here I've snipped an utterly false, demeaning claim by you. Will explain
if anyone, even you, requests it.]

>
> 5) I declined your offer,

I don't recall ever having made one. The only post I recall that even remotely
resembled a declination of anything came AFTER I finally stopped.

Then you attacked me so strongly for having gone on for so long that I told you
that you seem to have elevated "Mind your own business"
to the Eleventh Commandment.

Since then, I've found out that there was no need for an eleventh for YOU,
since the commandment against bearing false witness against
your neighbor is one you have no use for, at least not in the
form that Jesus said it. He left off the "against your neighbor"
part because of possible abuse of the concept of "neighbor."

> telling you that I had no interest in what

> was going on between you and Jillery.

I understand that part for the first time now. You aren't interested
in truth or justice where personal disputes are concerned.
You made that abundantly clear back this Spring, when Glenn corrected a distorted
comment you had made about me, and you didn't try to dispute his statement with him.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to next week.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 4, 2023 at 2:50:58 PM UTC-4, JTEM is my hero wrote:

> Pathetic, jillery wrote:
>
> > JTEM's parrot.
>
> You are so feeble, so worthless that you believe you can
> strengthen yourself by the mere mention of me.

JTEM, you might wonder why I made such a big deal about a third party,
Martin Harran, in my first reply to this post of yours.
Fact is, I didn't have time until now to make the connection clear.

Martin posted a shameless lie about something I wrote in support of
you against Ron Okimoto last month. Here is how that had transpired:

_________________________ excerpt, Ron O going first__________________________

> We both know who the nut job is.

Everyone would know that the nut job is you,
were it not for the fact that JTEM was uncommonly
merciful to you by snipping the following nonsense by you:

"What a nut job. When are you going to try to understand what reality
actually is?"

It is a sign of psychosis when someone confuses his private opinions
about people [1] with reality, without having produced an iota
of evidence for his opinions.

[1] This includes the author of the Evolution News article, David Coppedge,
and Glenn, and "Kalk" (Kalkidas), and now JTEM.


>It is the one that has assiduously
> removed everything that he couldn't deal with in this thread to the
> point where he didn't even know what he was in denial of.

The truth is just the opposite: he removed the incriminating
evidence against you and replaced it with the harmless "[---nut job---]".

And you are showing another sign of psychosis: a belief that you
can enter another's mind to the point of being able to
ascertain that "he didn't even know what he was in denial of."

Where's the description of "what he was in denial of"?
You conveniently neglected to include one.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++ end of excerpt
from

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/TvU0pcdovFU/m/dVBq7qs3BgAJ
Re: More IDiotic Cambrian explosion stupidty for IDiots to deny

Sep 18, 2023, 8:40:41 PM -UTC - 4

This is the excerpt which Martin shamelessly distorted as follows,
just two posts above this one of yours:

## you post bullshit about me without "an iota of evidence" which is what you
## yourself have described as a sign of psychosis.

Unsurprisingly, Martin neglected to describe any examples of the "bullshit"
that he was alleging.


Some day Martin might decide to confront you more directly, JTEM, or
to ally himself with Ron O more openly, and
it is good for you to know what sorts of wild distortions he is
capable of. If you click on that url, and start scrolling down,
you will see a wild orgy of spin-doctoring of earlier events by him.

Most of it is in the category of "a lie can go halfway around the world
while the truth is still putting its boots on." If you are in doubt about
how warped his rewriting of talk.origins history was on that thread, just ask and ye shall receive.


Peter Nyikos

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 6 Oct 2023 17:36:16 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Sep 18, 2023, 8:40:41?PM -UTC - 4

>
>This is the excerpt which Martin shamelessly distorted as follows,
>just two posts above this one of yours:
>
>## you post bullshit about me without "an iota of evidence" which is what you
>## yourself have described as a sign of psychosis.
>
>Unsurprisingly, Martin neglected to describe any examples of the "bullshit"
>that he was alleging.

Yet another of your stupid lies that is so easily shown false. From
the thread where you described the sign of psychosis:

enljgi93uh8iq8kn8...@4ax.com

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/TvU0pcdovFU/m/ALyh2j1uBgAJ

</quote>
"Nah, I was thinking more of "someone" who accused me of being an
apostate and said 6 months ago that he would give a detailed account
*next week* supporting his claim but still hasn't done so. The same
"someone" who falsely fabricated me saying stuff about abortion and
didn't bother to correct it when the source of his error was
identified.

Sound familiar, Peter?"

</quote>


Then again, with your faulty memory, maybe I need to post it in every
thread to which I refer to it, even one just a few weeks later.

>
>
>Some day Martin might decide to confront you more directly, JTEM, or
>to ally himself with Ron O more openly, and
>it is good for you to know what sorts of wild distortions he is
>capable of. If you click on that url, and start scrolling down,
>you will see a wild orgy of spin-doctoring of earlier events by him.
>
>Most of it is in the category of "a lie can go halfway around the world
>while the truth is still putting its boots on." If you are in doubt about
>how warped his rewriting of talk.origins history was on that thread, just ask and ye shall receive.

I bow to your greater expertise; you have shown time and time again
that you are one of the most consummate liars in TO, albeit not a
particularly clever one.

>
>
>Peter Nyikos